May 26
End: Seth Warner Shelter
Miles: 30.4
Total: 3456.9
My third morning at Tom’s house, I got up a little later than everyone else as usual. We had breakfast and got ready to go. This time Spiral and Swivel were on their guard and wary of any attempts to thwart their hiking plans. I was ready to go as well, and we sadly left Tom behind us and headed north on the sidewalk.
It didn’t take long to exit Dalton. We went up and down a few small hills and walked through our fair share of mud. The mosquitoes were out in force, but so was my ninety-eight percent DEET. Tom had said that the party was over after Dalton because we wouldn’t see as many towns and we would be back in the woods and mountains.
I must have missed whatever party there was at the edge of Dalton (or maybe I wasn’t invited), but we were definitely back in the woods and we were climbing Mount Greylock, the highest point in Massachusetts. The climb was long but not excessively difficult. There were plenty of sightseers at the top at the lodge and monument. We took a short break, then headed down.
We planned on exiting the state that day but we had a lot more ground to cover. Passing through Cheshire, a nothing town, we moved on to more small hills before getting down into North Adams. Sadly there was not even a convenience store on the trail there, and we moved on after getting some water from a house on the trail.
I pressed ahead because I wanted to get to the shelter before dark. After one bout of rock climbing I walked along the dirt trail and reached Vermont! Moses had left me his phone number in case I wanted to split a room in Manchester Center, but I was two days late.
Moving on, I got to the shelter just as darkness approached, and found Johnny Utah, Buckets, and a section hiker all in their sleeping bags. Utah was from Charlottesville so we talked about that while I cooked dinner. Spiral and Swivel showed up and had their dinner while I got into my sleeping bag.
During the day I had been marveling at the distance I had covered so far. Now in Vermont, I really felt like I was in the North Country, which felt strange but good. I slept pretty well and was thankful that the mosquitoes and black flies had gone to bed as well.
