200 Miles along the Long Trail

Much has happened, many trail days have passed, our Long Trail experience is almost over.  We have 5 days left on trail before we reach Canada but before we could get there, we swung west out of Smuggler's Notch, into the small village of Jeffersonville, VT for a complete day of rest.  The trail has beat us up.  It has been surprisingly difficult & challenging but a very memorable experience for us thus far.  We have been able to reconnect to our natural roots & have immensely enjoyed the high alpine forest along the tops of the Vermont mountains.  The smells, sights & sounds we have seen over the past 17 days have been seriously soaked up & have revived our spirits.

On our drive to Massachusetts, where we were going to begin the Long Trail, we decided to drive "blue highways" meaning no interstates.  The drive was a bit longer than we'd anticipated but amazingly pleasant compared to interstate driving.  We felt more connected to the places we were driving through - these roads would take us right through downtowns & kept our driving speed lower so it felt a lot less stressful than many other road trips we've taken.  In New York, we saw a sign that said we were crossing the North Country Trail so we pulled over & stretched our legs on the trail for a few minutes.  Cool to see the North Country Trail elsewhere because we lived close to it & have done hiking on it throughout Michigan.  Anyway, we got back in our car & it didn't take long for us to realize that our car was a lot louder than it had been a few minutes earlier.  We stopped at a gas station & Keith looked under our car & realized that our muffler & resonator pipe were both falling apart, due to all the rust.  Long story short, we took it in early the next morning to a muffler shop & they raised up our car to get a good look & found a number of problems to add to our list (leaks of different sorts) as well as the muffler & they were looking for upwards of $600 just to fix the muffler stuff.  We thanked them for their help & drove on our way in silence.  We were hoping this car would take us across the country in the next coming weeks & we planned to do so on a limited budget so it seemed we were in a bit of a dilemma.  Luckily, the muffler falling apart doesn't threaten the drivability of the car, it just makes our drive a lot louder so we hooked a metal hanger in there & we ultimately decided to continue to Massachusetts, park our car & begin our hike on the LT.  That would give us 3 weeks (ish) to figure out what we're going to do next.

So here we are.  That's where it stands right now.  We are optimistic & hopeful & will keep ourselves open & hope that we can still continue on our journey, one way or another.  And we still have 5 days to think about it.

Once we hit the Canadian border, we plan to hitchhike our way back to our car.  First, we hope to make it to Burlington, VT because it sounds quite appealing to us.  Largest city in VT & it only has 40,000 people in it.  We have fallen in love with parts of Vermont & everyone who lives here has great things to say about it.  So we think it has moved up to 3rd on our list of potential places to live...eventually...maybe...

For now, we have 5 trail days left & we hope to make the most of 'em.

Much love.