Another cold night last night, probably in the mid 30′s! It feels like just a few weeks ago I could barely sleep because it was so warm at night and now I’m putting on multiple layers of clothes and a down jacket to sleep comfortably. I prefer the cold nights to the warm ones though, it just makes it a bit harder to get out of bed in the morning. Vermont is still looking really good. There’s been a few little ponds that look really neat and today’s 19 miles went by quickly. We had one big descent and matching climb down into and back out of the road into Bennington, VT. Totally by chance we met Uncle Buc yet again parked near the trail at the road crossing. He’s making some sort of temporary career out of shuttling hikers around and taking donations so he keeps moving north to stay near the bubbles, so we keep running into him.
Toward the end of the day there was an amazing view from a lookout tower. Really nice to have some good towers with panoramic views again, very reminiscent of the early days in North Carolina. There was very nearly nothing man made visible from this one, just a couple of huge wind turbines that we’ve been seeing since Mount Graylock. Kid Gore is pretty crowded tonight. Now that we’re on the Long Trail there’s people doing either all or part of that along with more and more NoBo’s that started in April or March that we’re catching up to, and a few SoBo’s. We’re still going at a pretty high pace, especially compared to people just starting the shorter long trail, or the slower pace thru-hikers that started much earlier, so we don’t see many people for more than one night.