Getting cooked and eaten

This post takes me up to the 1,700 mile  mark, so fairly close to where I actually am on the trail. As in recent posts, I am mostly letting the illustrated pages speak for themselves. You can click on the pictures for more text detail if you wish.

Return of the angels

I was surprised to encounter trail angels again so soon after my time off. This is because I am somewhat ahead of the main bubble of hikers. But it was a very pleasant surprise as always. Of special mention is Tom Levardi, who is not a roadside angel but has been hosting hikers in his yard for many years. I was glad to be able to get my tent up just in time before a thunderstorm started. And then when it stopped, he brought me ice cream to my tent. Such a lovely soul and thousands of hikers will think of him fondly.

Getting cooked and eaten

My return to the trail coincided with a heat wave. Mid 90s Fahrenheit (high 30s centigrade). That was bad enough but the clouds of insects were relentless in trying to devour me. Particularly annoying were all the gnats which bombard your eyes. They are after the secretions from your tear ducts. There is usually an imbalance in the quantity of secretions between the eyes, and my experience as well as that of many other hikers, is that they almost always go for one eye rather than both equally.

A trail highlight: Upper Goose Pond cabin, Massachusetts

With all the heat and sweat, the swim at Upper Goose Pond cabin, was especially welcome. This place is a very superior shelter with a caretaker (Motorcycle Mama when I was there), and with good company, the lake, and pancakes and coffee for breakfast, it was a definite highlight of the trail.

Wet feet again

The heat wave eventually faded away into days of thunderstorms and rain. Although the cooler weather was welcome, the inevitably irritated feet were not. A particularly heavy and dramatic thunderstorm was compensated for by a stay in a shelter in good company, which included a section hiker who shared his full sized glass bottle of bourbon, which certainly would have added weight to his pack!

The cool weather then turned into some very cold nights. The rain also meant that Vermont lived up to its nickname of ‘Vermud’.

It always gets better

Better things are always just around the corner. There were great clusters of black and white butterflies (I think they are monarchs), when it warmed up. The woods provide so much Wonder and there are many things I want to draw every day.

The views came back too. Mount Bromley shares a name with my area of London, and the ski resort there has an almost identical logo to that of London’s Bromley council. Too close to be coincidence. The mountain has great views, and when I camped there, I had a lovely sunset and sunrise.

A couple of days later, I climbed to the top of Mt Killington, the first mountain over 4,000 feet since Virginia. The views were magnificent but would not have been if I had arrived a day later as the rain had come back by then.

And a few photos:

Being passed by Kristian Morgan during his attempt at the AT FKT (fastest known time) record.

Upper Goose pond

Heatwave insects

Little Rock Pond was full of salamanders