Aug. 1st 5 months on trail.

Eight AM Sunshine and I hit the trail headed for Bennington VT to pick up our packages. It was a 2.2 miles hike mostly steep down hill followed by a 5 mile hitch into town.  A man who was 88 was in the near by parking lot and was just thrilled to take us to the post office (we were not so thrilled with his driving). The two packages I picked up were my food drop (thanks mom and dad) and the replacement quilt from Jacks R Better. We transfered our food from the boxes to our food bags and headed to eat some breakfast. Breakfast turned out to be lunch followed by huge free ice creams with all the fixins. Our last stop was Right Aid for more Alieve to keep the pains down. While in Right Aid the rain started coming down,  needless to say we just went on with our day. After walking about a mile a "wild woman" picked us up and she was pretty funny. I had spotted Big Yankee another nobo hiker in the back seat of a car that passed, he had also hitched to and from town. Once back on trail we had quite a climb ahead of us. A continuous climb from 1366ft to 3573ft. in about 10 miles. On the first and most steep climb the rain began to get harder, we made it to the first shelter just 1.6 from the road where big yankee, twigs and lucky were also hiding from the cold rain along with a couple other hikers. Sunshine and I sat there for about 1.5 hours while the rain poured down.  Even though we were wasting time we were having a blast telling jokes and riddles and just being well hiker trash. I believe most of us have lost our minds.
Finally we got motivated and set out to do 8.5 miles up to the next shelter (Goddard shelter) I lost sunshine about two miles in to the climb, I was kinda cold so I didn't want to mess around with breaks. I made it to the shelter in 2.5 hours without stopping.  On the way up the fog got thicker along with the forest, It was kinda spooky especially when huge gust of wind would rattle the trees. The trail is beautiful up on the bigger mountains I'm so glad to be above 3000ft. although tonight may get a bit chilly. The shelter here is full of people probably LT Hikers I don't know I just peaked in then set up my tent. It is 9:02 and I'm sitting in my tent listening to the rain and wind pounding against the rain fly, sunshine is still not here and I am beginning to worry about her, the rain is steady and the temp is dropping I hope she gets here soon.

Loving Vermont!