Date: 2003-07-19
From: Red Barn on Vermont 12

To: Hanover, New Hampshire
Miles today: 23.3

23.3 miles. From Vermont 4 and the Red Barn to Hanover, New Hampshire. I did make it to the barn last night. I crossed the street to a white house and knocked on the door a couple of times before somebody finally came out. A gentleman came to the door by the name of Haas. He was here from Holland. Apparently the owner of the house was Dan Quinn. He was also the gentleman offering shelter in the barn. Apparently he and Haas had traded houses for a week. I talked to Haas for a few minutes and he told me that I could go ahead and stay in the barn. I misunderstood. I thought that Dan Quinn was actually in Holland now but that wasn¢t the case because he drove up later. I talked to him and introduced myself and thanked him for the place to stay. The barn itself was very much a New England barn. Very full. Ton¢s of ropes. There must have been a lot of cattle. He¢s got old mattresses laying around on the floor which was very much appreciated. I put my sleeping bag down on one of them. When I went down to talk to him I remembered he had left on the sign at the AT that help on the farm was always appreciated. So, I asked him what I could do to help pay for my stay there. He pointed out some bails of hay and some asparagus that were about 6 feet tall. Ridiculously tall asparagus that had all sprouted. He said I could go ahead and mulch that if I wanted to. So I went ahead and put my shoes back on and I mulched his asparagus with hay. Then I went back inside and cooked and got ready for bed. I actually didn¢t get to sleep until about 10:30. Anyway, this morning I woke up several times very early. I didn¢t actually wake up and get up until about 7:30. It was very chilly. So, I got up at 7:30/7:20 something like that and made some grits and got everything packed. Then I got moving out of there. I ran into another NOBO AT hiker that I had met yesterday as he was coming out at the Trail head. He¢d decided to stay at the shelter before that. We went ahead and found out where the Trail was going and hiked off. After about an hour or so I came up to Woodstock Stage Road. The guide said there was a general store there and so I ran down there and grabbed a roast beef hoagie and a coke and walked back up to the Trail and here I am chugging along. I hope to make it to Hanover tonight. It¢s 22 12 miles but I got a pretty decent start. The terrain doesn¢t look too horrible. So, hopefully I¢ll make it to Dartmouth College and stay in one of the fraternities tonight. A couple of notes that I want to make mention of¢¦.the rock walls and the ? Starting in NC you saw the remnants of walls that had been built buy ? rocks. Not too often¢¦until you traveled north where there were more and more of them. Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York had quite a bit of them. Vermont had tons of them and they were still in good shape. They weren¢t disintegrating or falling apart for the most part like the one¢s further south had. Also, you frequently saw remnants of houses and basements. Basically you could tell they had been buildings or farms. The rocks walls you start seeing in Vermont are in different pastures or properties. I read somewhere recently, I think it might have been in the companion, that at the turn of the century that Vermont was 70% farmland and 30% forest. It¢s rough to farm up here. Too much rain and it¢s too rugged. The growing season is too short so the farmers were never really successful here. At the turn of the century the industrial revolution brought along all kinds of cool toys to make farming in mass production possible. So in the midwest where you had mass areas to farm¢¦.what happened is the farmers from Vermont all moved to the midwest. Now Vermont is 70% forest and 30% cleared area. The forests have taken over all the old farmland but the remnants and the walls still remain. The other note is¢¦¢¦as pleasant as it seems to walk through Vermont¢¦the Appalachian Trail is very poorly blazed. The few blazes that are on the trees are either faded or chipped away so they are hard to see. There are just not enough of them. There are many times¢¦and it¢s not just me, I¢ve discussed it with many hikers¢¦.we start to wonder if we¢re on the Trail because we haven¢t seen a blaze for 20 minutes or a half hour. The Trail is so rugged up here that you could have easily missed the turnoff or the Trail itself and be going off in a completely different direction and not know it. It was a major source of concern for me and many other people that I spoke to. Today was a perfect occasion of confusion for me with the blazes. I ended up going south twice. I went in a circle this afternoon. So, I lost quite a bit of time. It¢s now 5:00 and I¢m still 3-4 miles from Hanover. Actually, I lost the Trail and I knew I had to go through Norwich, Vermont first before I get into Hanover. I hopped out at the wrong place. Today is Saturday and I¢m getting in late so that obviously means I¢ve missed the maildrop. I¢ll have to take tomorrow off and wait until Monday morning to get my maildrop. This one was important because all my winter gear is in Hanover now. Sleeping bag, jacket, gloves, hats¢¦all that stuff for preparation to go into the Whites and the severe weather it presents. This doesn¢t make it a big problem. I was planning on taking a day in Hanover anyway. I may take a couple of days off. I¢m really running into some particular problems here. The first one is my knees are beginning to swell and they continue to give me problems. Right now they look like they are wearing little water wings that the kids used to swim in the pool with. My knees are so bloated. The other thing is I noticed yesterday that there is something protruding from my groin and anal area. I¢m not sure what the hell it is. It could be a hemorrhoid or it could be a hernia. I¢ve never had either one of them so I don¢t know what it is. If I can stay around town I can see if it will go away or see if it presents a further problem and I need to go see a doctor. I can¢t be going into the White Mountains with anything less than a good physical condition because it can be very severe. It¢s not something that you want to go into feeling hurt in any way. I¢ve had a pretty darn difficult time today walking. I¢m not sure if it¢s because of the knees or if I haven¢t been eating right. Although I think I¢ve been pigging out. Maybe it¢s just the terrain. It¢s taken me a good ten hours today to do the 20 some miles which is a little slow for me. I¢m looking right now at the altimeter and it¢s saying we did about 4200 feet. 4200 feet ascents which is pretty hazardous. They were pretty nasty actually. Typically you have two or three really big ascents and fairly flat areas between them. Today was a whole bunch of little ones. They were almost as steep and they kind of beat you up. Very few flat areas especially this morning. They did a good job of slowing me down. I walked across the bridge at the state line about 5:30 in the evening. It was almost unreal just walking into town. I did get to into town and found out that you could stay at one of the dorms called Pamarchy..in the basement. That¢s what I did. I got in there. There were already a couple of people here. A lot of SOBO¢s¢¦.4-5 of them. Skeemer was there. Mudd was just leaving. He had gotten there early in the morning and decided to leave the same day. Bob from Athens was also in the Pamarchy basement. We sat around and talked for awhile. I walked over to Molly¢s restaurant on Main Street and got some food and drink then came back and went to sleep.