Into New England

As we hike into Massachusetts we are greeted with a deep old woods feeling. The trees are tall which give us a great shaded trail to hike on. We have had no problem finding good drinking water & have even come across a good amount of cool ponds. 

One of the ponds we hiked past

The way the sun came through the trees & landed on the ferns was almost magical. We have seen some wonderful berry bushes & some even more amazing mushrooms. It is like we are gnomes walking through this huge forest.  

About the third night we stumbled across a shelter / cabin called Goose Pond Cabin. The cabin sits on a private pond where you are allowed to canoe & swim. It has bunks with mattresses upstairs & has a caretaker that cooks pancakes & coffee for all the thru-hikers in the morning. It is all free but they take donations. 

Since it was such a beautiful place we decided to zero & take advantage of the free canoeing. There was a small island in the middle of the pond that we made it to & had lunch. 

Spanky & Sleeping Beauty taking off

Heading to the island. 

It ended up being a wonderful day full sunbathing, swimming & canoeing. 

Unfortunately another one of the reasons we took the day off was for Sleeping Beauty to relax & feel better. He had been feeling sluggish lately so we thought a day of swimming would revive him. Although the day was relaxing we came to find out that Sleeping Beauty possibly has Lyme disease. This has temporarily taken him off the trail to recoup but we are hoping for a speeding recovery so we can have our favorite hiking buddy back.  

So we pushed on one hiker short, but the trail calls & we have to keep making those tracks! We came across the MA turnpike & had to take a moment to think of our wonderful friend Louise!!!

Thinking of you Louise. Can't wait to see you. 

As we head on down the trail we are continually in awe of the gorgeous moss covered rocks, beautiful lake views & large great scented pines.  

You can see PaddyCakes & Spanky hiking in the background. 

Another wonderful surprise we stumbled across was the home of "the cookie lady"   This is a husband & wife couple that provide free cookies to all thru-hikers. We stopped for a great lunch break. They also sell farm fresh boiled eggs. Paddy Cakes & I had 6 between us. We just happen to have tuna salad for lunch so we put a few of the eggs with the tuna and Mmm Mmm best trail tuna yet! We gave big thanks to them and pushed on to a spot where we did some blueberry picking. 

The home of "the cookie lady"

We have just recently started to see South Bound thru-hikers on the trail. One of them swapped information with us about a great blueberry picking area. So we stopped & enjoyed the view & some fresh mountain blueberries. 

As we rolled into Dalton, MA we had a address in our guide book of a home we could tent in the back yard. We were pleased to find out that Tom, the home owner, not only let us tent but had showers, laundry, shuttle & breakfast for us. True trail magic! He was an unexpected trail angel. 

Tom's home where we tented. 

This is one of the factories that make the paper that US money is printed on. 

Another pond this one covered in Lilly pads. 

View of Dalton below

One of the many gorgeous big rocks we are waking past on the trail. We have officially gotten past most of the rocky trail terrain.   

One of our last climbs in Massachusetts was the climb to the top of Mount Greylock. The elevation is 3,491. It was our first big climb since Virginia & we killed it!!! At the top was this wonderful tower that apparently was made to be a light house for Boston. They ended up choosing a different light house for the Harbor so they put this beautiful one up on the Mountain. 

Unfortunately the tower was undergoing renovations so we couldn't go to the top. We did get to go inside & see the gorgeous tiled interior. 

 

We did meet back up with some of our buddies Wolf Man & Grey Cloud once we made it to the top.

As we hiked down we had a fabulous view of the state to come.... Vermont. We are staying in Williamstown, MA tonight & tomorrow will be making it into Vermont. Only three more states to go. 

As we left the peaceful trees with birds chirping & bees buzzing we came up to our hotel. We booked our room and since it was still early we had to wait in the lobby for them to finish cleaning. As we were enjoying the peace of the lobby, enjoying the air conditioning, and looking at a picture book of the Long Trail that goes through Vermont a very irritated lady stormed into the lobby. She immediately started yelling at the sweet lady behind the desk about this unbearable banging coming from her wall. Without giving the front desk lady a chance to reply she immediately demanded that she shouldn't have to pay for her room. When she didn't get the response she wanted she stormed out of the office yelling about how she was going to call the police. If that wasn't enough, she pounded on every door she passed where other guests were staying so that they had to be irritated like she did. We honestly couldn't believe it. We later found out that she also had stayed up until 4 am drinking and disturbing other guests most of the night. And her 4 year old daughter got locked out this morning while she was passed out. The front desk lady gave her back her money with the condition that she would leave the hotel. It really made us want to get back in the woods. What is this world coming to? It really was quite disturbing to go from our life in the woods straight to this. Sorry for the venting but just had to get that out. 

Hope everyone out there is having a great summer & can't wait to see all of y'all after this great adventure. 

-Puddin'