Old friends helping us along...

We are currently under the kind & generous hospitality of Red Lobster & LJ and their dog, Rosie who live tucked down in the woods near Surry, NH.  We met Red Lobster & LJ on the AT in 2010 on ours as well as their thru-hike, when no one yet knew these two would fall in love & soon be married!  When they heard we were heading to the Long Trail, they offered us a place to spend a few days so we could catch up & reminisce on the good 'ol days while taking some respite from traveling around.  They picked us up two days ago after a hitch landed us somewhat nearby & they will deliver us back to our car tomorrow afternoon.

 We completed the Long Trail on Tuesday, August 12th, the last of a 5-day stretch of really beautiful weather.  We landed at the border pretty early in the morning & soaked up the sun at the monument, celebrated with Long Trail Ales we had carried out & enjoyed the view into Canada.  What a trail it was.  So full of surprises.  Some days were full of the most technical trail we've ever hiked, others were a breeze & pleasantly delightful & easy trail.  At times we were questioning them even calling this a hiking trail because it was more like bouldering/rock scrambling/mountaineering.  Almost all days were muddy & slippery.  We fell more times on this trail than probably the AT & PCT combined.  There were times where we literally would laugh out loud at the trail just ahead of us because it didn't seem possible that that would be where we were headed!  But the adventures & obstacles along the way made the trail so rewarding.  Reaching the top of some of these peaks felt so dang good.  Climbing up Camel's Hump via the northbound Long Trail was one of my all-time favorite summits of a mountain.  We hiked through thunder & lightning storms, over cloud-covered bald mountains, through moose-poop covered trail & almost had our shoes sucked right off our feet by the muddy muddy trail numerous times.  We met some interesting folks as always.  We didn't see any moose surprisingly, but plenty signs of them.  But we did see a red fox, a snowshoe hare, an owl, peregrine falcons, plenty of red efts, salamanders, toads, frogs, snakes, slugs & many other assorted birds, bugs & other livings things.  We heard coyotes howling & yipping in the distance a few nights, hermit thrushes singing to us almost non-stop as we hiked as well as eastern wood pee-wees (my favorite), & an un-manned & unfriendly dog who may or may not have belonged to a person.

So anyway, we've finished & had a total of 23 days on trail.  There was a few mile hike out of the northern terminus, first on trail, then dirt roads with little to no traffic so we hiked into North Troy, very small town just under the border of Canada.  We were hoping for a meal but a general store was all there was so we grabbed chips, cold drinks & Ben & Jerry's ice cream to fill our stomachs up a bit.  Hitching was slow but eventually a woman picked us up & dropped us off at the next town, right in front of the general store.  Then a man from the Netherlands picked us up & brought us to the next general store, pretty much in the middle of nowhere, near the small town of Lowell.  This is where we sat for at least 3 hours, with no one wanting to pick us up.  We tried & tried with no success & soon enough another hiker - Beowulf - showed up who had also made his way down hitching after just completing the Long Trail.  Oddly, we'd never met him on trail because he had always been behind us but as the trail community works, we quickly became friends & chatted on about our hikes.  Neither of us were having any luck hitching, though, so eventually he took off walking down the highway while we stayed behind, hoping our luck would pick up.  We began scoping around for a place where we could stick our tent overnight if we needed to as storm clouds began rolling in.  Eventually, we got picked up and generously, they stopped to pick up our new friend, Beowulf, as well.  They dropped us off at another general store & very quickly after Beowulf got us a hitch.  We decided to stick together from there on because it seemed to be working & Beowulf had a car parked at a trailhead not too far ahead.  So then we were dropped off at a random corner where the first car picked us up & took us a bit farther.  And it took one more hitch to get us up to Beowulf's car.  We still had about 30 miles of hitching to go to get into Burlington & Beowulf decided he'd take us the whole way, which was amazing.  Upon arrival, we decided to have dinner together before Beowulf headed on his way.  He eventually dropped us off right at the door of the people's house we were headed to- Prophet whom we met on the PCT last year!

Quick note:  Prophet contacted us & invited us to visit after hearing we were on the LT from another pair of PCT friends - Hermes & Lotus - who had coincidentally saw our sign-in in a logbook while they were hiking up Camel's Hump a few days after we'd summitted the same mountain.  They were in the area on vacation & contacted us asking if we were indeed thru-hiking the Long Trail.  It was great hearing from them & we are very grateful that they hooked us up with Prophet so we had someone we knew in Burlington!

We decided to stop into Burlington because we were intrigued by the fact that it is the largest city in Vermont with a population of only 40,000.  We heard a lot of good things about the town - it's right on Lake Champlain, it has the University of Vermont, it has a lot of things we might be interested in, so we decided we should check it out while we were in the area.  So we arrived at Prophet's pretty late in the evening but he & his girlfriend, Kate were very kind & generous hosts as well.  We were greeted with good food & drink, a shower, laundry, a cozy place to sleep & were able to catch up on life post-PCT.  The last time we had seen Prophet on trail on the PCT was in Mammoth Lakes, CA and coincidentally we had met Kate, his girlfriend there as well.  Prophet helped us find a bus that would take us part of the way across Vermont, gave us a tour of the city & then dropped us off downtown so we could be on our way.  But first we partook in a Maple Mocha Creemie as suggested by Kate & it was indeed delicious!

 The bus took us as far as Montpelier, the state capital & it was pouring rain outside so we were feeling not so optimistic about hitching the remaining 80 or so miles down to meet Red Lobster & LJ in lower VT, where they could pick us up.  But this is where we were wrong.  This is where Natania picked us up - a recent implant from California & she was able to take us the entire way!  She was full of good conversation & we shared intrigue & interest into each others lives & she was the least-scary person you can imagine.  It was the hitch of dreams.  A good ending to an adventure of hitching madness over the previous 2 days.

So here we are, spending a comfortable few days in the home of Red Lobster & LJ.  They both had to work today so Unicroc & I climbed up the mountain out their backyard which has no particular trail up it, which made for an adventurous & quite an enjoyable experience.  Red Lobster took us into Keene, NH yesterday, a quaint town where we ate a very yummy lunch & where interestingly they filmed the movie Jumanji (RIP Robin Williams).  And tomorrow, we will see the small village of Surry & eventually head on our way.

The state of our car is still in question, but we think we plan to fix it as best we can & continue on our way.  We are probably even more so now than ever drawn to finish the PCT & hope to be able to visit some very special people out there as well.  Next stop:  Michigan!