Tiny Violin

It’s Tuesday, August 13th, and last night, I stealth camped at a site on top of a little hill somewhere in Vermont, about 15 miles away from the border of New Hampshire. And as soon as I got into my tent last night, it started to rain.

So, not only did I have an abundance of dew on my tent this morning, but also the remnants of rain. I think I need to figure out which tent manufacturer makes a model that repels water and never gets wet, because mine always seems to be soaked and therefore very heavy. Could someone please play a tiny violin for my tiny problems?

I packed up and got going a little bit before 7 o'clock. And today was a big day, because it was my last day hiking in Vermont. Thankfully, the climbing today wasn't nearly as challenging as it was yesterday. That was a huge 5,400-foot day over 19 miles. Today was about 17.5 miles to get to Hanover, and it was about a 3,500-foot climbing day. Better, but not exactly flat. I got a good start on the day and covered close to 10 miles by noon, which was great.

The trail actually spills out into West Hartford, Vermont, where there's a decent road walk that takes you under Highway 89 — if you’ve ever driven in Vermont, you’ve probably driven on Highway 89 — before heading back into the woods.

At that point, I decided to stop and have a snack. It was about 11 o'clock, and while I was stopped, someone pulled up to the trailhead, and a nice lady, probably in her late 60s, got out with a chainsaw — which was impressive. I decided to scoot up the trail to get ahead of her, and as I was hiking along, the trail started getting very steep. So I thought to myself that I’d like to listen to a podcast while I was working my way up the incline, and I stopped for a minute to deal with my iPod.

While I was doing that, the lady with her chainsaw and big backpack and helmet and all that caught up with me, and we chatted for a little bit. She's a volunteer with the Green Mountain Club, and apparently, there were a few trees up ahead that needed to be removed from the trail, which is why she was hiking up with a chainsaw. Kudos to her for that. I politely asked, “Would you like me to go first?” I mean, I'm not a very fast hiker, but I’m pretty confident that I’m faster than a 65-year-old woman carrying a chainsaw up a hill. But she said, “No, that's okay.” And then she started off ahead of me and proceeded to walk at about a half-mile per hour.

So that was awkward. I was right on her tail for a decent amount of time, but eventually, she needed to take a break, so she said, “Well, I guess you can go ahead now.” Thanks.

After about 15 miles, the trail entered the town of Norwich and continued through it for probably 2 miles, which was an extended period of time. Then I went under Highway 91 and crossed over the Connecticut River. Shortly thereafter, I reached the town of Hanover, and again, the trail went directly through the town.

There are limited opportunities for hikers in Hanover, though. It's a pretty high-end town, and the hotels are all very expensive and cater to the university crowd, rather than the hiker crowd. So it's a bit unclear how best to navigate Hanover. I kind of felt like a homeless person there for a little bit.

I’d heard that for a few hours each day, hikers can pay $5 to access the local rec center to shower and stuff like that. When I got into town, it was about 4:15, and I called the center to see if I could get in there, but they told me that they stopped allowing hikers to use the showers at 3 o’clock. That was disappointing. Instead, I found a bench in a very inconspicuous area and wiped down with a towel, changed my shirt, put on a hat, splashed water on my face, and just generally tried to make sure I was reasonably presentable.

Then I walked over to Ramunto's Pizza and Brew to get some food. I had a couple beers with my dinner and chatted with someone from Norwich about the town’s terrible property taxes. Another couple came in who had thru-hiked the AT in 2018, and they had been planning to do some hiking on the Colorado Trail this summer, but apparently, a lot of the Colorado Trail has forest fires right now. So they decided to hike from Vermont up to Maine instead. They told me that when they thru-hiked in 2018, Vermont had been a very difficult section for them, so that made me feel a little better. It was definitely a tough state for me, but I was able to get through it fairly quickly, I think. It was 150 miles, and I believe I did it in nine days. I’m pretty sure I won't be able to maintain that same pace in New Hampshire, though.

I left Ramunto’s and stopped into CVS to grab some trail mix and beef jerky and a few other things — like ibuprofen for my hip. And then I headed back to the trail. By this time, it was about 7:15 in the evening, and I knew there was a campsite about a mile and a half out of town.

So, like I said, the AT weaves its way through Hanover, and the last thing you pass before it goes back into the woods are the Dartmouth University athletic practice fields, which are right on the outskirts of town. When I got to that point, I saw a sign that said that the next campsite was 1.8 miles away, which seemed a lot further than what was listed on Far Out. But right there at the entrance to the woods, I saw about eight tents set up. They clearly belonged to thru-hikers who wanted to spend some time in Hanover but didn’t want to have to hike 1.8 miles to the campsite afterward. So I quickly grabbed a spot there myself and set up my tent.

Earlier in the day, I’d been walking along a section of trail that was pretty open and breezy, so I’d pulled over and dried out my tent. And I'm super glad I did, because it made setting my tent up at this makeshift campsite much faster and easier than it otherwise would have been. Normally, when my tent is wet when I arrive at a campsite for the night — and if it's not raining, of course — I try to give it a chance to air out before I set it up. But I didn’t need to do that tonight, which was great.

[Wife note: This is clearly a pic of the drying-out spot, not the campsite for the night. I just wasn't sure where it fit into the timeline, so I'm putting it here.]

Walking through Hanover counted for about 1.5 miles of the AT, so I did probably 19 miles today. I don't intend to repeat that tomorrow. I think maybe I’ll only do 15, but we'll see. It’ll be my first full day in New Hampshire, so we'll see how it goes.