Vitamin G

Day 47

We enjoyed a peaceful night inside the cabin and woke early hoping to enjoy another sunrise.  There were some great colors but the clouds blocked the actual sunrise.  We enjoyed reminiscing with Wildfire a little more about Byfield and missing the Rusty Can BBQ. Our minds were on BBQ and beers all morning.

We cruised through the rolling hills and made the decision to press on to the Inn at Long Trail in Killington VT.  We have reservations for the Inn on Friday but we are only about 15ish miles away. Originally we planned to do a shorter day today and then just do a couple miles in to arrive at the Inn on Friday. We decided to continue on, do the full 15 and just camp in the field across the street from the Inn. A hot meal at the bar in the Inn may have been a strong factor in this decision.  Cold beer may have also been a factor.  McGrath’s Irish Pub at Inn brags to have the best pint on the trail.

With the decision made we pushed on with a lunch break at Thundering Falls (which was a little less thundery due to the drought). We arrived at the Inn and set up our tent. We saw storm clouds in the distance so we tossed our bags in the tent and may our way to the common room in the Inn. We looked through the hiker box (found a ton of great surprises) and started to form a plan for the next week. We were surprised to see we would be leaving Vermont in a little over a week. The states just melt away until you hit the wall that is Virginia (500 miles of wall).

The rain came down hard and fast so we made our way to the bar to wait out the much needed rain storm.  Eric ordered a Guinness, or as bartender Bob called it, vitamin G.  The Inn at Long Trail is great experience.  We recommend stopping by. Eric even got to watch the Patriots preseason game in the common room.

 

Day 48

We enjoyed mostly peaceful night in the lawn across the street from the Inn.  A little after midnight we awoke yells of “Get outta here”, “Get”, and “You get outta here now!”.  We learned this morning that bears were trying to get into the trash and the Inn Keeper was yelling at them and shooting rubber tipped arrows from the window to scare them away.  We spent most of the morning drying out our tent.

At 10:21 exactly (way to go Vermont!) We took the bus to downtown Rutland. We enjoyed sitting back and watching the beautiful Vermont scenery fly by us, happy not to have to walk.

We walked around Rutland and made some important stops like Starbucks (yay first on trail!) and a large resupply at Walmart.

We walked through the historic downtown, went into the bookshops and stopped at a Stewarts for ice cream! Stewarts are only located in parts of New York and Vermont. Hayley has many childhood memories of building her own ice cream sundaes when visiting her grandparents in NY.

It was strange to be out of the woods and in small towns. It’s easy to forget there is a bigger world out there. It was nice to see the lush green mountains rising above the city. Many benches and buildings were covered in murals. We spent a couple hours downtown and then made our way back to the Inn.

Back at the Inn, we enjoyed some more vitamin G and live music.  The band was from New Bedford, Mass. It was a nice mix of Irish folk songs and contemporary favorites. We really loved being able to just easily walk up the stairs up to our room to end the night (no tents, no fuss). All in all, a really nice zero!