Geez. Well this trip is flying by as fast as the days in between my blog updates are. (sorry Nate)… I’m in Manchester Center, VT and staying at the Green Mountain house Hiker Hostel/5 star resort. This place is so nice and with your stay, you get a pint of Ben and Jerry ice cream!

I’ll try and remember what happened in between the time Katie visited me in PA and today…

I had a fantastic time with Katie and we hiked (a little ) then took a bus into NYC. It was awesome. We ate pizza, we rode the metro, we got lost riding the metro, we went to the museum of natural history, we walked the highline path (so nice), we watched two broadway shows, we ate pizza. I couldn’t have asked for a better time with my love.

Then she left. I was pretty bummed, and the walking was difficult. Not only because katie was gone, but because I did not see many people on the trail. It was as if all of the thru hikers hit the halfway point and started getting off the trail to visit family, to take breaks, to quit? I’m not sure, but it was kind of depressing.

After about 5 or 6 days of sucky walking, it was like all the hikers I’d been walking with crashed into each other for this big family reunion. It was really nice to see alot of faces that I hadn’t seen for so long. And everyone’s beards were alot bigger.

I hiked thru NJ. It was kinda nice. It was alot swampyer (is that a word) than I expected anything on the AT to be. It reminded me alot of the style of walking in FL and it was cool. I made it into NY and I loved that state.

The state parks were nice there, and Bear Mountain was really cool. We also walked thru a zoo that the trail passes and the bears den was the lowest elevation on the trail. That point was also where I saw my 5th and 6th bears! (in a zoo!) NY was also cool cuz I got to see some of my family. I stayed the night and got some good Puerto Rican food (finally).

Then I came to Connecticut. CT was cool but it sucked that they didn’t allow fires in the state.

Massachusetts was next and it similar to CT but alot cooler cuz we were allowed to have fires in that state.

I found a sweet straw hat in MA. MA was also the the first time I couch surfed on the trail (Google it if you don’t know what it is). We stayed with an awesome couple that were getting married and needed to pick a ton of strawberries to make hommade jam for their wedding. So we went strawberry picking!

We picked 77 lb of strawberries and I ate about 5 lb in the process.

Oh! And the couple we stayed with had a sick 1972 VW bus! Coolest ride I got since on the trail. Well, besides the hitch we got where that guy took us to a local cafe and bought us breakfast!

And that takes us to today. I’m hitting the trail in about 30 min and it’s going to be so hard to leave cuz the Green Mountain House is so legit. I’m
Pretty excited to get to New Hampshire cuz that’s where all the cool stuff is at. I’m Happy to get back into the Mountains again! Everything in the mid Atlantic was really flat.

Fajitas for breakfast!