Show Me the Cookies

[Wife note: Spoiler alert — he does not actually show us the cookies.]

I woke up this morning, July 30, at the Quality Inn in Lee, Massachusetts, which had a better breakfast selection than most. I was able to get an egg and cheese sandwich, a waffle — which was great — a yogurt, and a banana. I also grabbed a cinnamon roll for later in the day. All in all, a pretty good breakfast setup.

I had arranged to get a ride back to the trail from a nice lady named Trish. She and Don, who gave me a ride to the Quality Inn yesterday, are members of the Lee AT hiking club. They've all banded together to volunteer to drive people around, but they do accept donations. I’d donated some money to Don, and I gave some to Trish this morning, too. They put it in their group’s fund to purchase food for Trail Magic. The city of Lee actually gave their organization a grant but stipulated — for some reason — that they can't use any of the grant money to purchase food. They can do a lot of other things with the money to support hikers, but they can't provide Trail Magic in the form of food with it. So, the donations help to fund that, instead.

Trish dropped me off next to the trail at about 8:30. And it's funny, the section of the road that the trailhead was on is called Jacob's Ladder. And I think I still have some PTSD from when I hiked Jacob's Ladder way back... I think it was in North Carolina, but I can't remember exactly where it was. [Wife’s note: It was super early on. Here’s the post.]

The day began with a pretty healthy hike up to gain elevation again, but the hiking after that, over the course of the day, was rather unremarkable. A couple miles in, I got passed by three guys who I later learned were Quadzilla — who is doing the AT for the third time — Pyro, and 60. Those three guys all know each other and are hiking together. And they picked up a fourth person, named Dare, early on, so those four have been together for a long time now. They do big miles and keep a pretty healthy pace.

[Wife note: This guy Quadzilla is a BEAST. He has a YouTube channel you can check out here. It’s easy to see where his trail name comes from, but Rob says it’s even more obvious in person.]

A couple miles later, I bumped into Skillet and Oso again. Skillet’s been taking it pretty easy, because Oso is a kind of a chunky dog, and he’s not interested in hiking quickly or for very long. She’s making sure to put his needs well above her hiking desires, which I applaud.

Then, about 8 miles into the day, I came to an intersection with some Trail Magic. There was a guy there who’s retired and who section hiked the trail over the course of a couple of years. He gave me about four different trail names, none of which I can recall now. I happily wolfed down two hot dogs and a Coke and talked to him for a little bit. And then his buddy came by who's a cabinet maker. So I was talking with him for a while about woodworking and stuff, which was kind of fun.

At this same intersection is someone called the Northern Cookie Lady, who is well-known in the AT community for making fresh cookies and putting them out for thru-hikers for free. [Wife note: There’s also a Southern Cookie Lady, who I think was around first.] The current Cookie Lady is actually Cookie Lady 2.0. The original Cookie Lady in this area passed away sometime within the past few years, and the new Cookie Lady has a little farm that is right next to the trail and decided to take over the tradition.

So I made my way over to the Cookie Lady’s farm. It’s one of those pick-your-own blueberries places, and you can pay to pick blueberries for yourself, of course, but if you’re a thru-hiker, you can also offer to pick a bucket of blueberries for her. If you do, she’ll give you a hamburger. Quadzilla, Pyro, 60, Dare, and Matcha were all there, picking blueberries. And another hiker, named Salamander, showed up a little after I did and decided to do the same thing.

Salamander [Photo credit: Marc Serra]

I elected not to pick blueberries, but she generously gave me a nice Mason jar of blueberry lemonade and a couple of chocolate-chip cookies, and I hung out and chatted with people for a little while.

Eventually, I said goodbye to everyone and headed on down the trail. At the beginning of the day, I’d planned to stop for the night at a shelter that was 5 or 6 miles past the Cookie Lady’s place. But the guys picking blueberries all said that they were planning on going into Dalton to stay at Tom Levardi's house.

Tom is a very famous person on the trail. His house is literally on the AT. The trail goes right through the town of Dalton and passes in front of his home. He very kindly lets hikers camp in his yard and has been doing so for about 40 years. So I decided to join those guys and tent in Tom's yard, too. It would also give me the opportunity to get some dinner in town.

So, from the Cookie Lady’s farm, I made my way to Dalton over what turned out to not be a particularly remarkable section of trail. Fortunately, it wasn’t all that steep, either, so it was a pretty quick hike — quicker than I expected it to be. I pulled into Tom's place at around 5:30 or so. I’d covered close to 19 miles at that point.

If you want to camp at Tom's place, you literally just walk up onto his porch and ring the doorbell. He gives you the lay of the land and explains what to do and what not to do — like using the neighbor's trash can. Apparently, hikers have done that, and Tom gets yelled at whenever it happens. It's all pretty straightforward.

He told me about a couple of restaurants in town, but S. had already alerted me to a brewery called The Shire that's actually in the process of transitioning over to just a tap house and restaurant with some games or such. But for now, they still have some of their own beers left and available on tap. So I had decided to walk to The Shire for dinner, even though it was a little over a mile away. That meant that getting there and back would put me well over 20 miles for the day, but any time I have a chance to try out a new brewery — new to me, anyway — I’ll find my way there.

I set up my tent, got my things squared away, and walked to the brewery. For dinner, I ordered some tacos and shrimp tempura, and I got some banana cake for dessert. Of course, I tried a couple of their beers, too, which turned out to be pretty nice. They had a decent Kolsh, a Munich amber lager, and a pretty interesting pastry stout. I’m glad I went.

While I was there, they were doing musical Bingo. They’d play a song, and if it was on your Bingo card, you’d mark it. I guess everybody knows how to play Bingo. Anyway, it was with songs instead of numbers, and it was kind of entertaining to watch everyone. After that, I walked back to Tom’s feeling pretty full and happy, and now I’m ready to get some sleep and head out again in the morning.