Miles Hiked: 9.2
Hours Hiked: very fast
I woke up this morning in the tent, just steps away from the trail. I'm not sure where we were because last night we had set up camp in the dark after trying to hike at night in order to get closer to Great Barrington. But it was not raining, which made me happy, because forecasts had called for rain during the night and into the morning. I packed up the mothership quickly and started hiking, in hopes of getting to the Great Barrington Post Office before it closed at noon. I left Glassman behind to break camp at his insistence, he's a little slower than I am in the mornings.
The first person I ran across was this older Scottish guy who told me he had stayed at the first shelter after hiking from the trail head for a few miles. He then went on to tell me that he must have lost his water bottle and lighter at that shelter, but due to his thick Irish brogue it was hard to understand what he was really saying. It seemed to me that this man's way of sterilizing water was to boil it and without a lighter he was soon to be in trouble. Quickly, as I still felt in a rush to get to town, I gave him my matches he drank a Nalgene of my treated water. I told him Glassman was further up the trail if he needed more help.
Getting to the post office was my mission and after hiking six miles I reached Blue Hill Road and it looked like it would get me to town faster then if I kept on hiking the 9.6 miles to Route 7 or the 1.2 miles to Route 23. Amazingly the first car stopped to pick me up, the driver was named Joby. Although he was not going to Great Barrington he took me directly to the post office. Due to his kindness I was at the post office with time to spare. After getting my food drop I decide to go to the library and work on the blog while I waited for Glassman to catch up. After an hour Glassman strolled in and helped with more blogging for another hour. We swapped hitch-hiking stories; Glassman had gotten a ride from a young ranger at the state park who wanted an excuse to drive into town, even though he hadn't planned to come to town today.
We went to the Thai restaurant across the street and enjoyed a civilized, delicious, full meal while we were dry and warm while the temperature outside dropped quickly and it rained. We finished the whole meal, looked at each other, and knew we were both still hungry. So we walked across the street and bought a giant burrito to share. Such is the food life of a hiker. Once we had gone to the post office, visited the library, eaten two lunches, and re-packed all of the food in the care package into the mothership and Glassman's pack, we headed out to get a hitch back to the trail.
A couple with kids our age picked us up and told us about the cabin that they were building in the area. They dropped us off at the trail and we hiked another three miles to the next shelter. There we found Crazy Horse, the thru-hiker we met in Dalton. Accompanying Crazy Horse were fourteen 13, 14, and 15 year olds and two dads. They were just a big group of friends from school, lots of brothers from about five families. They fed us left-over chicken Fajitas. Glassman and Crazy Horse waited until they got into their sleeping bags in the shelter, then built a big fire where we roasted hotdogs and popped popcorn. Tonight Glassman and I shared the shelter with 12 other people. All in all, I'm glad that we made it to the post office before it closed.
a view
Thai Food Deliciousness
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