Thankful for Dogs

I woke up this morning, the 12th, at the Weary Feet Hostel, and yesterday's post might not have been overly descriptive, because I was trying to record it in the house after “quiet hours” had begun. I was staying in the bunk room, and everyone else in the bunk room was already in bed and trying to get to sleep. So I was just sort of wandering around, trying to find a place where I wouldn't bother anybody.

Breakfast was at 7:30, and Other Rob/Rabbit was there — he’d gotten a single room — and Heisenberg, who’s a retired chemist, thus the name, and Pub Crawl, who’s also a very interesting person. She got her trail name because any time she goes into town, she tries to visit every single bar or pub or brewery in search of craft beer. She used to be a beer tender. So, we’ve had some great conversations about beer.

Bubble Bath was there, too, and this guy named Arkansas, who had tent-camped in the yard the night before. That’s a cheaper option, but not particularly worth it, in my opinion. I met Arkansas the first couple days I was hiking, so it was interesting to rendezvous with him again. He's the one who wanted to name me Bob's Pizza, if you remember that from many, many posts ago.

Breakfast was fantastic. Pancakes, eggs, sausage, coffee, fruit, the whole nine. So I filled up on that. I've learned that the best way to have a good hike is by stuffing as much food into your stomach as possible before you start hiking. So that’s what I did.

After breakfast, Other Rob/Rabbit and I left at the same time, and we walked back to the trailhead, which was about a half mile away. Since I was slack packing today, I was able to quickly accelerate down the trail, which felt nice. I really appreciated having a very light pack, so thanks to Pub Crawl for arranging for our stuff to be brought over to the Woods Hole Hostel for us. My backpack had almost nothing in it.

The hike was really pretty uneventful. It went through a very low area, along a river, but there wasn't really anything of note. Later in the day, I bumped into Beans on the trail. I hadn't seen him for a few days. He and I hiked together for a little bit, but he was continuing on to a shelter that was about two miles past where I got off the trail.

He was going to a shelter called Doc’s Knob, which made me laugh a little every time I thought of it. I kept thinking, “There's nothing I could do. His knob was out.” [Wife note: Rob’s referring to a moment from an episode of the Ricky Gervaise Show where Stephen Merchant is telling a story about how he was trying to pee in the ocean, his swim trunks were down, and he was getting thrown around by the waves. He was trying to get his friends’ attention on shore for help, and Ricky Gervaise comments that if he’d been there, he wouldn’t have been able to help him because “he had his knob out.” Click here and forward to the 21:00 mark to watch. It’s pretty hysterical!]

From the trail, there's a gravel road about .4 miles down a fairly steep road to the Woods Hole Hostel. And the entire time I was walking down, I’ll admit that I was fretting about having to walk back up the road the next morning. But in the end, it was totally worth it. Woods Hole is consistently voted one of the best hostels on the AT, and it has a much different vibe to it than the other hostels I've stayed in. They were more like very simple bed and breakfasts. Woods Hole is a whole compound. Very old buildings. It's been around for decades, and it has a very strong “commune” feel to it. And I don't mean that in a bad way at all. You know, there are goats running around and a vegetable garden and they offer yoga sessions and the staff is very touchy-feely. And it’s full of hard-core hikers. The whole place is very much built around community. So I was welcomed very kindly.

And since I didn't have a full pack, I hiked there pretty quickly. I covered about 16-and-change miles, but I did it much faster than I’d expected. So I arrived at around 3 in the afternoon, which was fantastic. I retrieved my stuff that had been delivered and picked a bunk in the bunk house.

I’m pretty stoked about my sleeping situation. Most of the bunks are in the attic, but I picked one in a little room off to the side on the main floor. I'm in the bottom bunk with no one on top, and there’s only one other guy in there with me — Heisenberg. He's nice and around the same age as me. The bunks in the small rooms are shorter, less than six feet long, so most people don’t want them, but I fit just fine! It’ll be nice to have a room to ourselves.

I just chilled out in the afternoon, and when dinnertime came, the proprietor — whose mother, or maybe grandmother, started the hostel — called everyone to the front of the main house. She had us all stand in a circle, and she told us about how her grandmother used to require that someone say grace before each meal, but she didn't want to do that. So instead, she has everyone take a moment of silence, and then we all go around in a circle, say our trail name, and mention something we're thankful for. I said I was thankful there were dogs at the hostel that I could hang out with.

Next, we got the whole spiel on what we were eating for dinner. She made moussaka, and everything there is homemade, which is really nice. It tasted fantastic. And while we were eating dinner — we were sitting outside — a giant bird, or at least a bird that’d been storing things up for a while, pooped right on Heisenberg's head, which created quite a stir. Fortunately, I was sitting one person over and didn’t get hit by any fallout. But we definitely got a good laugh out of it.

Tomorrow, I'm planning on doing a very large day, so I’m glad I got to have a good dinner tonight, and I’m sure I'll have a good breakfast in the morning before I hit the trail.