Date: 2011-07-10
From: Housatonic River Rd

To: Jug End Rd
Miles today: 23.7

we did our usual morning routine and got to the trail fairly early. immediately there was a pretty sweet series of waterfalls and cascades along the Housatonic River. the pools looked deep enough to jump into from the ledges above. being so early in the morning no one was up for any plunge action. this was a shame. i feel that every oppurtunity to huck one's meat off of a cliff, should be taken. alas, we did not huck our meat today. Flowers however, was extraordinarily excited about the rapid succession of lame daisy like new additions he was finding. i was displeased with his over enthusiastic joy for such things. carry on if we must... we ran into H^3 again. he was jealous, again (of our slack packing). he had unfortunately managed to break one of his treking poles. we tried to assist him in "hiker rigging" the broken bit, but it did not cooperate. he will continue with one pole until he can get to an outfitter with appropriate skills. we summited Lion's Head, which had lovely views of the nearby mountain ranges. as we approached the climb to bear mountain, the path started to thicken with weekend warriors and ignorant day hikers. myself and Havoc were quizzed about three times on our hiking agenda. explaining the trivial details to muppets becomes tiresome rather quickly. we had lunch on the raised cairn atop bear mountain. this is the highed point in CT at a whopping 2316'. i eat 2316' for breakfast... the next few miles crossed us into MA for the first time! booya, four states to go! MA opened up with a couple of sadistic climbs up some really steep rocky junkie trail. during one of these ascents we were almost run over by an absolute lunatic who was descending at a full sprint!! when he came up to me and G-lock, he lept for an overhanging tree branch to swing on. this was an unsuccessful tarzan like move that he went for. he slipped a bit and kept jumping/running down the 60 degree pitch. i assume that he is now a quivering pile of pus at the bottom of the slope. we did have one of the most scenic ridge walks i've ever encountered. the ridge leading up to the summit of rice mountain was stunning. the mountain fell off at a severly steep cliff which gave way to the pastures and farmland thousands of feet below. a small airplane few passed us below our current elevation! this was a spectacular view. when we got to the top of our summits for the day, Flowers took off ahead of us to meet Tera. she had already arrived at the trail, so Flowers thought that he would smash out the last four miles at trail ninja pace to keep her company. in these last four miles it was starnge to find two separate shelters that were spaced a mere 0.1 miles apart. i assume that they probably wanted to tear one down, so they built the replacement first. i'm not positive, since i didn't bother going to either of them off of the trail. there is very little value to walking non trail miles, unless a cheeseburger is received for doing so. the value is obviously increased when taking part in such events. Tera was anabsolute gem today while we were plodding out miles. she went out and purchased brats and smore making paraphanalia for us to partake in around the campfire tonight. good times were had. especially when Mingo decided to walk down to where we were camping for some good banter. we were rather amazed to find that neither of the kids had tried smores on a fire. we were moe surprised to see that neither of the kids actually liked eating the smores. i polished off the extra smore population since the wee ones were afraid. Mingo, Flowers and i saw to it that no whiskey was allowed to see the morning. all in all a good night was had in the presence of good friends.