“Rest for the Wicked”

AT Day 91

Miles Today: 2.85

AT Mile: 1658.1

(Green Mountain House Hostel; Manchester, VT)

Something big might have happened today… and I feel like I should jump right into it.

Plinko and I might be leaving the Appalachian Trail. It might be over for us.

After this week, we might not call ourselves AT hikers anymore.

Because…

…

We’re hiking the Long Trail!

For those unfamiliar with it, the Vermont Long Trail runs from Vermont’s northern and southern borders for 272 miles, and around 105 of those miles are shared with the Appalachain Trail.

In other words, we’re technically already on the Long Trail, and we have been since the AT entered the state of Vermont. But the two trails diverge in about 60 miles from where we left off today, and Plinko and I are seriously considering diverging off the AT for an extra 10-14 days to complete the Long Trail. It would bring us to the US/Canada border (which I think would be pretty cool), and then we’d catch a ride back south to the AT/LT split point and pick up the Appalachian Trail from there.

So no… I’m not going to leave the AT unfinished, at least not for long. I’ll just be stepping off the AT to finish the LT, then I’ll head back to finish the AT.

I like the idea of getting off the AT for a little while. I like the idea of having walked from Georgia to Canada. I like the thought of completing another thru hike and adding it to my list. And I have a feeling that I may never come back to the eastern US hiking trails again after this summer. So if I want to hit the Long Trail then now might need to be the time.

We have just over 60 miles from here to the next trail resupply town (Rutland, VT), and so we need to decide by the time we leave there. The split point is about a mile north of Rutland. So we’ll have an answer decided upon by the end of the week.

—

For now, there are three of us at the Green Mountain House Hostel in Manchester Center, Vermont. We caught back up with Yama (the hiker from Japan) yesterday, and although we didn’t share any miles together, we did tell him to contact us when he got to town today so that we could all lodge together.

The day ended up being such a typical town day… good lord I’m exhausted from it all.

We only hiked 2 miles in from where we had camped last night, and I even remarked to Plinko that we’ll have almost the entire day to rest and relax.

Ha! Joke’s on me…

I forgot how busy town days can be.

We had to hitch into town, go to the grocery store for breakfast, go to Mountain Goat to pick up my new shoes and my repaired Hyperlite Pack, shop around and get a new shirt and some food items at the Mountain Goat, replace all the gear from one back to the next, switch out my shoes and insoles, open a bag of coyote teeth that I got in the package as well, then we went to the post office to send out my old shoes back to Arizona and return my loaner pack to Hyperlite, then we went to the Ben & Jerry’s shop for a snack, then we went to the cannabis dispensary, then we went back to the grocery store to resupply for the next leg of the trail, then we met a couple of other hikers who are staying at the hostel, then we waited out a rainstorm at the grocery store, then we went to a place called DSB (Depot Street Burger) for burgers and fries, then we got a ride to the hostel… are you getting tired yet, or are you still along for the ride?

At the hostel it was laundry, pack explosion, shower, trim nails, edit journals, resupply food… good lord… it’s making me tired trying to list all of this.

Needless to say, it’s now almost 9pm, and we’ve been in town for almost 12 hours, and I’m still not done with everything I needed to get done in town.

Such is life on trail…

Sometimes we get time to slow down and float on a lake and look up at the clouds. But a lot of time we go go go.

—

Oh! Here’s a good anecdote from the trail worth telling:

So, when Plinko and I reached the road where we’re going to hitch into town from, he drops pack, but I continued up through the parking lot and to the start of our next stretch of trail. My thinking is that I don’t want to skip any steps along the AT, and when we get dropped off back at trail tomorrow, I don’t want to accidentally “skip” the parking lot and miss those steps of the AT.

Anyways, when I get to the other side of the parking lot, I see that there’s a cooler with soda and a bag of candy on top. It was almost too good to be true. I hadn’t eaten anything for breakfast and I was *starving*. So I quickly peel open the bag of chocolate, pour 3 of them into my hand, and pop one right into my mouth, as I open the cooler to search for soda.

That was about when I realized that the chocolate tasted really funny. I spit it out and looked at the bag.

It was fucking soap.

Who the fuck leaves a bag of soap labeled “Caramel & Seasalt” that look like chocolates?

So now there are two of those soap squares that have bite marks on them, back at the trailhead.

—

It rained a bit earlier, but it’s absolutely *dumping* rain now as I sit at the kitchen table of the hostel and write this. We’re fortunate to not be out in it, especially since we were expecting something like this last night. We were lucky to wake up dry this morning, but whoever’s out in it now is getting hell.

We’re planning to get back to trail tomorrow. We have food all packed and gear set up. But I’m in no rush. I only want to do about 10 miles tomorrow, which will bring us to a lake that I’ve been told is good swimming. I’m hoping to camp there.

Wormwood.