Thursday, August 22,2019
I left the Minerva Hichey campsite at 7:30 am. My goal was the Peru Shelter about 19.5 miles away but I only made it to Lost Pond Shelter, which was still about 15 miles for the day. Not bad.
It was a slog all day though. I was tired and just looking to grind out the miles. I needed to get to Manchester Center early enough on Friday afternoon to get to the post office before it closed. The good news was that I had my very own trail angel ready to assist once I got there.
My friend Mike was dropping off his son at St. Michael's College, just north of Burlington, on Thursday. He was planning on driving back to Rhode Island on Friday so he offered to meet me at the trailhead and take me into town. We decided on a 2:00 p.m. meet up on Friday, so I had to get through this day and the next with some decent mileage days. I'm not going to lie. I had some doubts that I could do it.
But back to the task at hand. There were a lot of rocks the size of bowling balls on the trail, so it was slow going. The highlight was the "Rock Garden." The pics below don't do it justice. There had to be hundreds of little rock thingamajigs that people created, like little statues. It was a cool, if spooky, sight if you aren't expecting it.
I had lunch at the impressive Little Rock Pond Shelter and carried on through the Big Branch Wilderness Area to the less impressive Lost Pond Shelter. I arrived there about 4:30 p.m. and found a good campsite with a good water source nearby (always important).
I hit the hay a little early as I knew that I had about 14.5 miles to cover the next day. There were some decent climbs to do as well so I was still pretty nervous I could pull it off. To help myself out, I decided to get on the trail by 6:00 a.m. I'm not a morning guy so this was going to be interesting...
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