Harmon Hill (not Harmon Rabb)

Hi Blog,

So far, the weather is holding. Woke up to a gorgeous morning. We realized that we forgot to get Eddie and George out for the customary "wake up in" photo.  So, we took them over to the pond this morning so they could see the ducks.  The ducks are pretty use to people.  As we sat at the picnic table, Mama Duck and her six ducklings came right up onto the bank and began munching on grass seeds. How cute are they!

After breakfast, we did our one hour of Chinese language study.  We leave for China in less than 8 weeks.  Our reward for all that hard brain work, was a nice relaxing walk in the woods.  We decided to hike on the Appalachian Trail (also known as the Long Trail in this section), south of VT Route 9, which is the opposite direction to the backpack we plan to take next week.  For those AT afficianados in the audience, a sign on the trail informed us that we are 1,563 miles North of Springer Mountain, GA, the southern end of the AT, and 657 miles South of Mount Katahdin, the northern end of the AT - or, in other words, almost exactly 2/3 of the way up the AT for the through-hikers.  Those through-hikers who left GA early (say, in February) or who are particularly fast hikers might be passing through this area now; most won't pass through for another few weeks.  Here's Kathy at the trailhead sign.

Well, the hike was mostly relaxing if you don't count the 1/2 miles stair case leading up to the top of the ridge before it leveled out.  We met another hiker, whose wife decided to turn around 2/3 the way up. She went back down to wait for him at the trailhead parking lot. We felt bad, because he set a turn around time so as not to leave her waiting too long and never reached the top of Harmon Hill. Sometimes you just have to persevere through the tough parts so you can enjoy the easy parts, like the walk in the woods along the boardwalk.

Once we reached the summit, there was a trail register with an AT notebook inside.  These trail registers are used by through-hikers to check for messages from their friends.  We left a note to all the through-hikers we met in the Smokey Mountains. As we mentioned above, they probably won't be by until next month.  We left our emails address and we'll let you know if any of them contact us.

The payoff for this somewhat strenuous hike came a short distance from the trail register with an amazing view down onto the town of Bennington, Vermont.

On the way back down, we rant into a young couple with their five year old son. The kid was just leaping from rock to rock having the time of his life. We so look forward to when William is old enough to go hiking with YeYe and NaiNai.

Back home it was showers, laundry and making dinner, as well as some other chores. We are planning a four day/three night backpack next week, so we are dehydrating lots of goodies to bring on the trail with us.  We also spent time with some hiking guides and topo maps to familiarize ourselves with the backpack route.

Chat at you later,

Kathy