Day 120!
Today I celebrated being on trail for four months! We woke up at St. Mary’s ready to hike. It was looking dark and dreary and we were hoping the rain would hold off, but as soon as we stepped off the road (which we walked for about a mile) and back into the woods, the rain began. It was a light drizzle, which was nice since we had to walk over some farmland at first. From here, we had a surprisingly steep climb at first. After the steepness subsided, we had a fairly easy hike up to the summit of Mt. Greylock. About 1.5 miles from the top I ran into Oracle! He’s a friend of mine from home and is a SOBO this year. We stood in the drizzling rain and talked for about 20 minutes before Nokey and I headed up to Greylock. The hiking was easy and criss-crossed the road a few times before we got up top. We ran into several of our friends up top, had lunch, and talked to a ranger. By the time we got our packs on, it started raining again, this time much harder! We walked down the hill in the pouring rain and started to get cold. When we reached Mt Williams we ran into Testament who was trying to get ahead of us a bit so he could get into Williamstown to get his food drop. We hiked with him until we got to the road crossing just before MA-2 and he ran off to get his goodies. Nokey and I headed into North Adams, where just 0.7 miles away was a Chinese buffet! We ran into Chiba there and had mini reunion since we hadn’t seen him since NY. Float, Rose, and Skinny Rambo also joined us as we ate and waited for Testament. We all filled up did a mini resupply before heading back up the trail 1.8 miles to the Sherman Brook campsite. The water there was the best we have had in MA, coming from a clear spring right out of the sandy bottom. We are only 2 miles from the VT border now and I can’t wait to get there tomorrow. The photo is the monument on Mt. Greylock.