Day 70

Day 70: 20 miles

Well I’m in Vermont, my 12th state and as I type this I can still smell Vermont bag balm on my fingers.

I’ve gotten really good at getting a hitch after I already walked most of the way to my destination. After walking probably over a mile and half back to the trail today along the road, someone finally stopped and offered to drive me the last .4 miles.

It was a slow and steady climb into Vermont but I was welcomed with the sign for the AT and the long trail. Since crossing the border I haven’t stepped foot on a patch of ground. Massachusetts at least had patches of no snow but not here.

There have been decent tracks to follow so far but I did end up accidentally getting off trail and taking a snowmobile trail for a while today. The tracks are really uneven. It looks like people went out and hiked on those days where it was really nice so they postholed down pretty deep.

I am really appreciating the beauty of the Vermont forests so far. I imagine it’ll only get better.

I didn’t drink much water today but I thought I’d fill up and chug when I got to camp. It turned out the water source there was frozen over with several inches of ice. There was one spot where it was open and I was able to get about 1/8 of a liter but not much more.

It was cloudy most of the day and I was actually pretty thankful that my face got a break from getting fried with reflected sun every day. Gotta raise awareness for snow burn

It’s so quiet tonight. After dealing with really high winds the last few days, not having any noise tonight seems odd but really nice

Song of the day: hallucinate-dua lipa