Date: 2007-09-16
From: Kent, Connecticut

To: Virginia Beach
Miles today: 0.0

Whoopee! Made it out of Salisbury, Connecticut after sitting around in front of the hoity-toity grocery store, that wanted more than 3 bucks for a box of Gushers (my current favorite food). My lunch consisted of a pint of Hagen Daz Coffee ice cream, a bottle of coke and something else, which I can't particularly remember. Uly and I left town together, and it was a nice and relatively easy walk to the first shelter, all coming together for an under 10 mile day. The trail to the shelter, however, was really steep, which wasn't fun, but it was nice when we got there. There was a couple from Buffalo there, and they had pudgie pie makers. The girl made pudgy pie pizzas, and when the first one was done, she said "who wants one?" We all asked if she wanted it, and her reply was "I eat last."--what a deal!!!! I hadn't had a pudgie pie since Iowa, so it was nostalgia cooked in a fire. After waking up, we did about 5 miles to the Housatonic River, and arrived at a power plant dam. Everyone was sitting around on the rocks, and I sat around and ate Gushers and read a bit. Squigglywhampus announced that he was going to jump off of the adjoining cliff into the area below the falls, so I waited around until he bobbed back up, and headed South. I had the pleasure of walking on the only handicapped accessible portion of trail for about 1/3 of a mile, then got back onto familiar tread. I quickly came across a place where a train had derailed, or so I'm guessing, because tons of laminated 2x12 boards (really expensive) were just pushed down into the woods, along with a lot of other lumber and debris...it was kind of interesting. They should have salvaged the wood and built a shelter! I caught up wity Uly as he was eating lunch, and we headed out together after both becoming sufficiently cold (happened before I had finished eating). We stopped at the next shelter for water, only to find that it was .2 further off the trail, so we skipped it for the stream that was supposedly at the next road crossing. After the shelter, Uly paused for something or other, and I kept walking. I was hustling along thinking how nice it was not to have to look down at the trail, when I decided to look down at the trail. Good decision. I was about a stride away from stepping on a 5 foot long rattle snake that was soaking up some sun. Pretty startled, to say the least, I muttered some choice words. I decided not to start harrassing the snake until Uly got there, because he has better cell phone reception than I do, in case things went downhill. I asked him if he wanted to mess with the snake, and he said "not particularly," which I took as "poke him in the face," so I poked him in the face...no reaction. Given the cold temps, it was moving at a snail's pace, and we didn't even manage to get a rattle out of him (or her, whichever). We briefly discussed killing the snake and eating it for dinner, but neither of us wanted to run the risk of being bitten. Since the snake was going so slowly, we weren't really interested in waiting until it was totally off of the trail, so a little running leap took us out of harm's way. We arrived at the shelter just before dark, and none of the other guys ever showed up (not sure where they went). It was incredibly cold last night...I'm definitely going to be doing some gear switching on my trip home.A short hike along the river and over a few steep, protracted climbs, brought us into Kent. Unfortunately, the outfitter does not have GoLite gear, ("what's GoLite"), so I am unable to get new shoes, but that's OK. We ate lunch at a little deli, which was tasty, and we're headed to the grocery store here in a bit in order to buy the last little bits of food that we need to last us for the rest of the week. All I need is Gushers and Pepperidge Farm cookies (I ate two bags since we left Salisbury). I have developed quite the taste for Pepperidge Farm cookies...they're loaded with calories and goodness. We're thinking about getting steaks at the grocery store and cooking them over an illegal campfire at the next shelter. Campfires are supposedly illegal in the state of Connecticut; I think that they're trying to let as much dead wood and detritus collect on the ground so that whenever lightening strikes, they are blessed with magnificently uncontrollable wildfires that blindingly ravage the countryside.