Day 6-10 - 2025

Day 6-10: total miles walked so far - 68

Manchester Center, VT to Clarendon, VT

Vermont has stepped up and shown its true colors! This week has been full of beautiful mountain top views, crystal clear ponds, lakes and streams, cooler temperatures with little to no humidity, and even an assortment of colorful wildflowers, not a lot, but still some.  I remain baffled as to why we see no wildlife in the forests; no deer, squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits … nothing.  Anyone know why?

Yay me! After almost 1700 miles on the Appalachian Trail, I think it was a success!  I could tell it was time to give it another try.  I bent over, pushed in one nostril and blew as hard as I could out the other nostril.   It sprayed everywhere but on me!! Yay me!  I’m pretty sure I may have mastered the farmers blow! 

What’s better than having our very own personal trail angel? Having 2 personal trail angels!! Charity’s college friend, Kathy (trail name, Joy) has volunteered to join in on this crazy adventure.   We love that she has joined us and has definitely played an integral part in researching locations of trailheads and in actually finding us.  It hasn’t been easy.  I know when Charity volunteered a year ago to shuttle us, to be our dropper offer and picker upper, she thought how difficult a job can it be?  Today, I think she’d say otherwise.   It takes a team … thanks Joy for joining in on all the fun (??!!)

We’re slackers!  We love to slackpack.  For those that don’t know or remember what that is, I’ll explain.  Instead of carrying our full packs, we will carry day packs and will get dropped off in the morning at one trailhead and be picked up several miles up the trail at another trailhead later that same day.  Instead of camping out that night, we stay where there is a comfy bed and indoor plumbing.  Our first day slacking, we didn’t realize it but the shirts we wore to hike in matched the color of our hiking poles (noted by Charity as we were heading out.)   I tell you this only because a funny thing happened that day regarding our color coordination.  We are close to the end of our hike and a group of elderly hikers (yes, older than us!) are coming the opposite direction and one of the ladies stops at FROG and says, “I like your color theme.”  Now … we’ve already discussed how my husband has no style (pant legs around his ankles) and he definitely has no idea what a color theme is so we couldn’t help but laugh and acknowledge it wasn’t planned at all, It was the only clean shirt available.  This made his day, now he thinks he’s not only trendy and sexy, he now also gets the attention of the ladies with his color themes!  Oh brother!

Y’all!! I know I mentioned this last week but I didn’t emphasize it enough!  After trying another hamburger at a top notch steakhouse and it not even coming close, I have to give another plug for Madison Brewing Co. in Bennington, VT.  Hands down the best burger I’ve ever tasted!!  Those that tour places that I hike, you HAVE got to go and get one, or two!  No, I don’t get anything for promoting but it’d be nice if they gave me a burger a week for life for the shoutout!

Jupiter and Isabelle.  Jupiter is a thru-hiker and her friend, Isabelle had just arrived the day before to hike with her friend for a week.  They are in their early 20s and of course put in a lot more miles per day than we can only dream of.  We are sitting on top of Styles Peak enjoying the view with them when Isabelle says she doesn’t think she’d be able to hike 25 miles the next day.  Jupiter is quick to respond, “No, it’s only 24.”  FROG and I can’t remain silent as we both say together, “ohhhh, it’s only 24, that makes it so much more doable.”  We all laugh, but how much you wanna bet they did it; we don’t know, we never saw them again. 

MIA … Charity and Joy … we lost them again.  As we make our way out of the woods, we see trail magic set up at the trailhead parking lot which always conjures up excitement at the sight.  We have hiked faster than we thought so not seeing Charity and Joy waiting for us is no surprise.  We are welcomed by “Sir Stops A Lot”, he goes by “Stops” for short and offers to make us eggs and corned beef hash for breakfast.  We know we’ll be picked up soon, so we just ask if we can have a cold drink and sit in his chairs.  We were the only hikers that were there so getting one-on-one conversation with Stops was a real treat.  I had this strong feeling that we had met him last year when we were hiking through Bennington, so I started looking through my pictures and wala! I was correct.  He was excited that I had remembered and wanted a selfie of all of us to post on social media.  It’s been an hour and still Charity and Joy have not arrived.  Stops decides no more hikers are coming through so we help him pack up his things as I get a message from Charity.  “Wandering aimlessly.  Hang tight.”  I text back, “Are you lost?” “Yes! Yes, we are very lost.  I think we may be getting closer.”  We knew they’d be there eventually so we weren’t worried at all.  We were happy and content.  They did arrive soon after that and the first words out of Charity’s mouth, “This ceases to be fun!!”  We are just so thankful that both times they were lost and couldn’t find us, we were enjoying ourselves with good conversation, comfy chairs and a cold drink.  We’ve only had trail magic twice and each time they were lost and couldn’t find us.  I wonder if this will be the pattern for trail magic? Do we wish for more trail magic or not?

Sidenote: we’ve gotten smarter, we go out the day ahead and locate the next days trailhead so Charity knows exactly where to pick us up, only took us 10 days to figure that one out!

Baker Peak.  We always look at our “Far Out” app before heading out on our day’s hike.  It is an app that will tell us where the shelters are, what views are coming up, water sources, etc.  It’s a great resource of information, BUT it doesn’t necessarily give you warnings of potential risks.  People are able to comment and that is where we read, “Don’t climb if it’s wet or raining.”   Well, it wasn’t wet or raining that day so we proceed to tackle whatever it is before us.  As we get closer, off to our right is a sign for a side trail that reads BAD WEATHER BYPASS.  We have been on this trail how many years now??!!  and we can’t recognize a RED flag when we see it??  Nope, we bypass the bypass and continue forward.  Oh my goodness! We look up and I turn to FROG and ask if we should turn back and go take the bypass.  He says, “We’ve got this! We are FROG and Faith!”  It took us over an hour to scale this rock wall, one SLOW step at a time!! We had full packs and every step we took we had to lean forward so we didn’t tip backwards.  I can’t even imagine how bad this could have been if we had fallen backwards.  FROG did end up falling but it was at the top and fell forward.  Thank God!!  The views were absolutely worth it once we reached the top!!  Now is where I get to toot our horns just a wee bit.  As we reach the top, we see three 20 something year olds come off the bad weather bypass trail and they’re singing.  Of course they are, they didn’t take the strenuous hike up Baker Peak!! BUT, they didn’t take the strenuous hike up Baker Peak and WE did!! Either they’re a lot smarter than we are or they aren’t as tough as we are.  We’ll let you decide. 

Many thanks again to Charity (and Joy) for arranging a place through VRBO for all of us to stay for the week as we slackpack each day, running us to Dicks for new Superfeet (new insoles for my shoes), taking us to get ice cream and food (we’ve found some pretty great eateries, check out the picture of our chili dogs!), dropping us off and picking us up (eventually!) at trailheads.  Y’all are the BEST!!