The Way I Go Along The Appalachian Trail

Where has the summer gone. It’s hard to believe that it’s the end of August already. Schools will be starting in another week. My Grandsons in Alabama  have been back to school for 2 weeks already. I’m glad that everyone is going back to school rather than the covid classrooms they attended last year via Zoom. Returning to normalcy is a good thing 😉. Today we are hiking in the Green Mountain National Forest from US 4 (1704.1 NoBo) to Keifer Road (1690.0 NoBo) equaling 14.1 miles. With today’s hike we are also breaking the sub 500 trail miles left to hike; 499.5 trail miles to go 🎉… but who’s counting 😉🙄. We began hiking at 9:00 am; the temperature was only 62° but it is expected to reach almost 80.  I don’t know who marked the 500 mile mark but I think it’s about 10 miles off when comparing the location to AWOL 🤔. The picture doesn’t show you the magnitude of the entire drop off as this embankment is over 50 feet high. This 500 trail miles marker from Katahdin is a still a little

Today is our 134th hike so we’re right on track to complete our thru hike within 175 hikes. We have hiked 1679.5 miles (76.6%) which leaves 513.6 miles left. I remember when we only had 513 miles completed 🙄. I won’t get too excited until we’re cross the Pennsylvania/Maryland border. There’s only 41 miles in Maryland, so I’ll have Harpers Ferry in my crosshairs 😉. Today we are continuing hiking in the Green Mountain National Forest from Chateauguay Road (1718.6 NoBo) to US 4 (1704.1 NoBo) equaling 14.5 miles. We began hiking at 8:30 am under cloudy skies. Rain is in the forecast for this afternoon; keeping my 🤞🏻that we get done before then. This section of the Appalachian Trail (105.5 miles) is also known as the Long Trail   Boardwalk crossing a swamp before the Maine Junction. Maine Junction. Hiking through Gifford Woods State Park. Glad I’m not hiking SoBo to Springer Mountain. Thundering Falls. Meet “Splash”. He left Katahdin on July 16th. “Splash” is from Colorado via Californi

We left Turtle Power’s vehicle at today’s ending point yesterday and we intended to just drive my vehicle to the starting point. All very well said and done except we could not get to the trailhead as google maps directed us as the local road became impassable. We then found a secondary route which was longer and came in from VT 12 but we eventually got to the trailhead…  Today we are hiking from Cloudland Road (1734.0 NoBo) to Chateauguay Road (1718.6 NoBo) equaling 15.4 miles. We began hiking at 10:15 am  (2 hours late) after we drove around and came down Chateauguay Road from the opposite direction  🥴. We met “Matty” and “Dragonfly” at the trailhead as we pulled up. They started from Springer on April 16th and they are from Texas. They are planning on getting to Baxter State Park to summit Katahdin the first week of October 🥴. We told them that the Hunt Trail is officially closed for the season on October 15th so they may want to consider going there sooner then flip and go SoBo t

Summiting Mt. Katahdin was an unbelievable experience. I’ve seen dozens of pictures of those who have conquered the mountain but I had to look at my picture on Katahdin a few times before it hit me and I realized that I am one of the fortunate ones to complete this segment of the journey. I don’t want to go as far as say it was a spiritual or an out of body experience  but it certainly made you think and put thru hiking the AT into perspective. We’ve met a lot of hikers over the past months; most were wonderful, sincere, good people. There is a certain camaraderie and a sense of a common fellowship that you form with other thru hikers. I didn’t see “Swamp Iris” and “Sugar Gal” on the summit or coming off the Abol Trail -  “Sugar Gal” was having difficulties with some of the rock climbing. I surely hope they successfully made it to the summit  🙏🏻. So now we continue on our “Ultimate Platinum Slack Pack Flip -Flop - Flip Thru Hike” going south to hike the states we jumped over in order