The air temperature plummeted to near 40 degrees during the night. This was the first time I have slept with all of my clothes on and the bag zipped up on this trip. Inside our down, 2 person sleeping bag we were both comfortable in the chilly, mountain air. Something small could be heard chewing on the trash under our tent platform, but whatever it was left us and our gear alone.
The morning air was cold and our hike for the day short so we elected to sleep in for a while. While we were eating breakfast and packing up a number of hikers we had met on the trail passed through our camp. One AT hiker we met had lost his IPhone in a stranger's car while getting a hitch back from town. We let him use our phone to try to sort out the mess of procuring a new phone for himself. By the time he was done playing phone tag with AT&T and family members back home it was almost noon. This was our latest start of the trip, by far.
The day's hike dropped about 2,200 feet to US 4. Knowing that we were hiking "downhill" all day made the frequent climbs thrown in all the more maddening. The views along the ridge were spectacular, though. The forest, in places, featured impressively tall trees. The space beneath the forest canopy was open and airy as not enough sunlight penetrates the tall trees for underbrush to grow.
A few minutes after 3 the trail finally reached US 4. Our destination for the night was the Inn at Long Trail. Although the name suggests that the trail would arrive directly at the inn, a re-route some years in the past caused the trail to intersect the highway 1 mile west and downhill from the inn. The 1 mile road walk, all up hill, was tiring at the end of our hike. Traffic zoomed by on the busy, four lane US highway.
The Inn at Long Trail is one of the coolest places I have ever stayed. It is a B and B, pub, restaurant, and hiker meeting place built right into the cliffs at Sherburne Pass. Murray McGrath, one of the owners, is very nice and helpful to hikers. He has a coin operated washer and dryer right on sight. The interior is decorated in a style all its own. It is half Irish Bed and Breakfast and half ski lodge. Much of the interior structure is made of wood that still resembles the trees it came from and the walls are decked out in Long Trail and Appalachian Trail maps, posters and photos. This is one place no through-hiker should miss.
We checked into the inn, took showers, made phone calls home and then headed down to the pub for some food and drinks. Murray told us local stories and jokes while serving us a couple Long Trail Ales. This was the perfect way to celebrate hiking 105 miles of the Long Trail and our 7th wedding anniversary!
We have made the hard decision to end our through-hike here for this year. Our bodies are both beat up and we could use a few days' rest. We'll use the next couple of days to rent a car, drive back to North Troy to retrieve our Jeep and do a little sight-seeing. The plan is to head to nearby New Hampshire for a backpacking trip once we are rested up. We've hiked over a third of the Long Trail and plan to come back to finish it next summer! The Green Mountain Club counts trough-hikes done over multiple years as End to End Hikes too, and now I can see why - it is some hard hiking! We've really enjoyed our time on the trail. Now we plan to enjoy a little R and R before heading back out into the woods. I'll post updates on the best of what we find in the next couple of days and on our next backpack.
