July 23 & 24
Miles: 13 & 17
Location: Winturri Shelter, north of Killington, VT
Weather: Pretty nice yesterday. Today has been cold (high around 60 degrees) and rainy. Light rain was non-stop after about 6:30 AM
Complaint of the Day: Yesterday– Killington was pricey. The mini-mart in town charged me over $40 for two days of groceries and the state park where I camped charged $20 for a site. If I had any more energy I would have hiked out another mile or so and camped for free next to some stream for free. Today– complaining about the rain that never ended would be too easy, and there is a more important thing to complain about: gluten-free corn flour tortillas. Tortillas are a major part of my diet on the trail. The store in Killington had the gluten-free tortillas on the same shelf right next to the regular tortillas and I grabbed the wrong pack when I was shopping last night. Not only do the gluten free tortillas taste terrible, they also fall apart easily. It has only been a single day and already they are little more than crumbs. But now I have to either eat them or carry them out. Neither option sounds appealing.
Yesterday was tougher than it should have been. I only had to go 13 miles to get to Killington, but I hadn’t slept well the night before. I woke up tired and never really woke up. It ended up taking me most of the day to cover those 13 miles even though the trail wasn’t that tough. By the time I got to the park and set up camp and walked to the store to buy groceries and then back to camp, I was exhausted. I was in bed by 8:00 and fell asleep shortly after.
I slept in to almost 7:00 this morning. I woke up feeling much better, though I dreaded having to take down my tent in the rain, which had somehow started early this morning. That rain never quit. It kept raining all day. Never all that hard, thankfully, but very persistent rain. But I was feeling good regardless. I passed a shelter around 11:30 and there were two other hikers sleeping inside who clearly hadn’t bothered to get out of bed at all this morning. Part of me was tempted to quit for the day and join them out of the rain, but I still had plenty of energy, despite the rain and chill in the air.
I made it to this shelter around 4:30 and quickly changed into my dry clothes and crawled into my sleeping bag. I won’t be moving much until morning. Hopefully the rain stops by then.
Living Life on The AT 