I’m sitting here with my legs up resting after about 16 miles of hikling this weekend. Diane and I decided to celebrate our anniversary early and spend the weekend together side hikioutng.. It’s been wonderfull.. Doday we did about 9 miles from Bolton Mountain back to our house.. ..
More on that after a quick flash back to last night.. As part of our extended anniversary weekend, Diane and I were heading out for Sushi round 8PM.. as we headed through the flats before French Hill We saw the car in front of us swerve at 50 MPH to avoid hitting.. a .. was that a dog ? Nope.. it was a cow.. several cows !!!
We ulled over and switched on the emergency lights.. Diane jumped out an shoo-ed the cows back off the road ..
The two of us tried to shepard the 20 or so young and confused bovines
back to their pens.. but .. there were too many of them.. and too few
of us.. I drove off for help.. I picked up neighbor Daryl and his
family.. then we called Kin and his family.. the cows owner’s.. they
weren’t there.. but their farm hands were.. Then the P’s across the
street showed up.. at that point we had enough folks to make a human
fence. we were then able to move the cows into the pen.. it was fun and
funny.. but it could have ended really badly..
Flash forward to this morning.. at 8:30 we met our friends Lisa and Mark and their labradoodle Elroy in the Bolton ski area parking lot. They’d offered to walk with us up to the long trail.. we didn’t have a trail mp.. and besides.. we like their company..
Mark and Lisa took us up the maze of nordic trails to get to the ridge where the Long Trail crosses .. I photographed the trail signs to remind me of the way (Google is my freind here because I can look up things I’ve blogged about later… to remind me.. )
It was about an hour and 10 minutes up to the long trail crossing.. and only a few hundered metes to teh entrance to Harington’s view.
What a beautiful view it was.. it’s a sheer cliff with views of Mansfiel to the north, Bolton to the east and Camels hump to teh south.. Satori jumped up on the rock before we could stop her !. She jumped down safely before I could do anything.. it was a hundered feet down into the forest on the other side.. OMG.. was that close !
We placed a SamStone here to replace the one that Owen and Ben left.. and a through hiker named Sam then found..
Here’s Mark making himself popular with the doggies..
After soem ooohing and awwwing.. we said good bye to mark , lisa and elroy.. they headed back down to bolton.. and we headed south on the long trail. It was all in all about a 9 mile hike.. We locked into the white blazes and surrendered to the pleasant monotony of the trail…
We talked about all sorts of things..solved many of the world’s problems.. around mile five we started making stuff up to talk about.. It’s fun to think about folks who hike the long trail all the way.. I’ll bet their conversations after 3 weeks would be pretty bizarre and funny !
We came across some fresh moose tracks.. but .. we never saw the moose.. we’ve seen them up here before.. but we made enough noise to ensure that we couldn’t run ainot anything with hearing.
I kept up the tradition of seeing faces in the trees.. .. what do you think.. natural.. or man made ?
About 5 miles in we stopped for a light lunch.. Food is so good on the trail !
Just after that we came out on Bolton Notch road.. This is where we often start our hike.. We crossed the road and tucked back into the woods again.
We did find this little guy slithering across or path.. He even posed for us.
Hey.. does this look like a… ? .. This is graffiti we pass all the time..
The trail had lots of up and down.. mostly dry with good packed trail.. Eventually we came down to a large beaver pond..
The girls too advantage of the mucky water to cool off.. it was about 85 degrees down in the valley.. not much cooler up here.
We scrambled over the beavers dam and continued our trek south.
Right after the beaver pond there’s a another nice lookout.. we put our last Samstone there overlooking Camels hump .
We noticed a large number of downed trees all across the trail . There had been some extremem weather.. microbursts I guess their called .. that knocked down lots of trees earlier this week. Mark and Lisa and their son Rusty and his girlfriend had come up earlier to clear some of the trees that were down across the trail
Eventually we came up to Duck Brook lean too.. and their pungent privy..
it came prestocked with libertarian reading material
Diane checked up on the action that had come through by reading the shelters logbook. .. and added an entry for us.
From there it was about a mile and a half home.. Finally we did the last hike up
And then we broke through the woods to catch a view of the valley and our house below.
From there we followed the powerline down to stage road..
Diane rewarded the girls for their great hiking.. they were so tired..
then it was abotu a half mile home..
All in all we did about 9 miles today and about 7 miles yesterday.. between both days.. we saw 3 other folks on the trail.. and this is the busy season 🙂
I love vermont.. I love my wife..
and I’d love ot go to sleep now…
nite everybody… nite sam !
-me