Day 117 (Mile 1599.1 – 1621):

1600 miles!

Still not feeling good.

Chilled at the next shelter for a while to eat some weight off of my pack. I gave all my unwanted tuna to Legs. We were both thrilled. He gained food he wasn’t yet sick of and I lost a significant amount of pack weight. It was at least a pound, but it made all the difference to me. =D  The couple in the photo before were some people that started the Long Trail yesterday.  They offered a tangerine for us to split, but Legs took it for himself.  Wasn’t too bothered, just a little surprised he’d actually keep it to himself. Oh well. At least I don’t have to carry the weight. 

Found out Legs had also did the miles to also get to Vermont last night. That guy is not afraid to hike big miles at night. We leap frogged each other until I left him behind at kick ass the trail magic at the parking lot off of Route 9 before the sorta steep incline that neither of us were excited to do. Trail magic was thanks to a Thru-hiker who happened to be off the trail a couple of days due to small injury and also had his truck. I think he is from the area.

A south bounder getting dropped off from town, mentioned to Legs and I that there was a rock scramble up ahead that reminded him of the whites, in which I responded, “can’t wait” sarcastically, not at all eager to start the climb ahead as everyone else chilling by the trail magic. Clearly, I have not had the pleasure of hiking through the whites, but I imagine it can’t be as bad as the rock scrambles in PA, which it wasn’t.

Legs mentioned something about wanting to get to the fire tower to see tomorrow’s sun rise, which interested me as well so I said I would meet him there. The fire tower was only .3 more miles than I intended on doing for the day.

I stopped at the shelter with the intention of waiting up for Legs behind me, but found myself debating on staying the night at the shelter instead, since it was a really nice and relatively new one with a pipped spring. Also, there was a former thru-hiker there with some bourbon. While all very tempting, I decided to hike the additional .3 miles with Legs.

Met some other hikers who had the same idea as us by the fire tower. By the way, camping spots up there were superb! One of those hikers was a very interesting character named, “Yak.” He was offering weed and a micro dose of LSD for the morning (I wasn’t interested). He decided to call the weed rat poison from then on because of the way I rejected, which I will explain because I will admit it was kinda silly after hearing his response. So…I do not remember why this conversation came up, but my Mom was giving my brothers and I advice if I were to buy weed, not to buy it in the city because they may trick us since we were, “rich white kids” and actually give me rat poison instead of weed. My Dad then turns to my Mom and says, “shouldn’t you be advising them not to buy weed at all?” While, I agree people can lace drugs with something harmful, I did not at the time know what weed looked like and for that matter, know what rat poison looked like either. My Mom was clearly trying to scare me at the time, but I to this day did not know what rat poison looked like, as a result, looked like an idiot rejecting Yak’s proposal. Yes, I know judge me. I lived under a rock for some time. Anyway, I am not sure the reason, but this fellow acts like a hillbilly. I very much was entertained by his colorfulness.

Another beautiful day with an unexpected rain for the night (Making our days really muddy to point that out). This time after night fall while talking around the fire.