Date: 2016-09-10
From: Killington peak

To: rutland
Miles today: 11.4
Weather: clear sky

We woke up to catch the sunrise near the gondola lodge at the peak. It was a beaut. And pretty great with the morning coffee. On the way back to camp the nice lady from base camp outfitters was up there with her running group and she chatted with us for a bit. Her and her friends do a lot of intense mountain runs. That morning they came up all the way from the base to catch the sun as well, which I'm sure is a huffer if you're running the whole way. It was mostly descent all day. We had brunch at the governor clements shelter. It's pretty overused being close to a road, but had walls of stone and a fireplace, as well as historical tidbits in the log. It's the second oldest shelter on the LT, built in 1929, and only a couple are older on the AT.  Kate got a head start out of there assuming I'd be faster, but I never caught her during the 7 odd miles to the hitching road. oh yeah, and we passed the 500 mile mark! 1/4.4thish of the way done. Theres one in a tree and before that the supposedly current one written out in stones on the ground, both facing towards nobos. Since all the nobos are late now and theyve got two notices, i gleefully switched the stone one to face the oncoming sobos. Hitching was again a bit hard, this time with active aggression, including driving on the shoulder pretending to hit us and flipping us off. We gave up and starting walking to try and catch a bus when a nice Massachusetts couple with a car filled to the brim with kayak gear passed us 3 times and stopped. The lady had thru hiked in 03 and they were on their way for the guy to kayak the length of lake Champlain in like 2 days. I guess they'd seen the trail unexpectedly, turned around to check it out, and then wanted to give us a ride in solidarity even with the whole back seat and hatchback overflowing. It was so nice. It took them 10 or 15 minutes to rearrange so kate and I could wedge ourselves in a half seat space on top of each other. They dropped us off at the infamous yellow deli, a basically free hiker hostel with free Yerba mate and breakfast run by the twelve tribes spiritual community. It's all WFS or donation. Part hippie commune part cult that makes their own food, goods, and soap organically. It was still their sabbath so we were invited to their circle dance and dinner too, but only made the latter. We went to the brewery down the street instead, hopn moose. They're a bit odd but very friendly and love hikers. I suppose because we're wanderers and wonderers and good pickins for new recruits. They want you to stay as long as you like and visit ALL their communities, on trail and off, and organic farms all over the world. All the men have beards and tiny pony tails and Hebrew names. They fed us delicious lentils, then we hit up a another bar downtown (no drinking or smoking at the deli) and hit the hay. Unfortunately it was 90 degrees or so in my bunk and I woke up 2 hours later in a sweat. I went out to sleep on the deck for a little bit until it started raining and then I was up. All in all I got maybe 3 hours of sleep, whichll make it easy to leave tomorrow at least.