Beaver Pond

Day 3, July 2, 14 miles

Up early and the motel owner shuttled me back to the wet trail at 8 am. Today the forecast was for partly cloudy, but not rain–praise the Lord, Hallelujah, can you say Amen!!
The trail was still muddy, of course, but at least it didn’t resemble a river anymore. I still had to take it slow, but it wasn’t nearly as treacherous as yesterday.

I went straight one time today when I was suppose to have made a sharp right turn, and walked about 1/4 mile before I realized it, so I ended up doing 1/2 mile extra from that little mistake, and I hiked 1/4 mile down a blue-blazed trail to a shelter to stop for lunch and had to walk the 1/4 mile back to the trail, so I had 1 extra mile that I can’t include in my miles hiked today because those don’t count. This kind of stuff happens a lot. Hikers walk a lot of extra miles that don’t count.

I had two milestones today. The first was I

Entering Vermont

crossed into Vermont, or Vermud as it’s known by hikers. When you cross the MA/VT state line, the AT coincides with The Long Trail for 100 miles. The Long Trail was the first long-distance footpath and it covers 273 miles. It starts at the state line, and after 100 miles, it goes North into Canada and the AT splits off to the East toward New Hampshire. As soon as I crossed the line, there was a cute, young brother and sister team just starting their thru-hike of The Long Trail. I also saw Solo and Vanguard again for a brief minute today. They retreated to town last night too, but stayed at a trail angel’s house. They were two that were at the 1st shelter. They, of course, left me behind quickly.

The second milestone was that I crossed the 1600 mile mark, leaving less than 600 miles to Katahdin. Woohoo!!

Passed the 1600 mile mark

I hiked about 9 hours today, including my extra mileage and a shoes off, foot soaking break. I’m ready to be done with all this mud so I can make a little better time.

I’m in my tent listening to a river run. Actually, it’s not a real river, it’s just a very swollen creek that sounds like a raging river. I also smell the aroma of spruce trees. It smells like Christmas.

My home

All in all it was a good day. Looking forward to doing it all over again tomorrow.

By the way, I think I’m going to give my pack a name like Tom Hanks named Wilson. I’m thinking I’ll be having conversations with it soon. I’ll let you know what name I decide on or I’ll take suggestions.

I don’t have cell service tonight so this post will be at least a day (or two) behind.