Day 141-The Magical Gnomes Have Been Hard at Work

Aug 6-14.9 miles-Lost PondShelter to Minerva Hinchey Shelter-AT mile 1683.6

Today was a good day. I think it’s because we got our usual start at 7:00. There’s something about knowing I have plenty of time to get the miles done (even though, when we get a later start, we still make it well before dark). 

We had two climbs, but before that we went by Little Rock Pond. 

There were very nice campsites near the pond. I came up with a bit of a song to the tune of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”. It goes like this: 
Goodbye Little Rock Pond
It’s time for us to move on
We can’t stay here at your campsites
We’ve more miles to go, so so long
Back to trail that goes through the woods
Back to the rocks and the roots...
Oh I wish we could stay, but we really can’t 
So goodbye to Little Rock Pooooond

There’s a loon out there!

There was also this trillium seed pod near the pond. 

We popped out to a Forest Service road and walked to the Rock Mtn trailhead. I thought, uh oh...Rock Mtn. What are the chances there’s going to be rocks???

Well, not at the beginning! Best trail all day!

Later...yes. But, the main reason it’s called Rock Mtn might be because of this. 

The cairns. This is called the “Rock Garden”.

A pretty tall one

Flat Will enjoyed the cairns. 

LB is such a poser!

Less than a mile later, we came to another one. 

Many had been knocked over. 

But they were being rebuilt. Guthook says the cairns are built by magical gnomes. I’m just sure that is true!!! We ate our lunch here. 

The descent down was long and not my favorite (the downs never are). At the bottom was another road, then the beginning of the climb over, yet another, Bear Mtn. This was a long climb, but not too terribly steep. The descent wouldn’t have been too bad, were it not at the end of the day when my knees and feet are tired of going down. 

We are at the Minerva Hinchey Shelter (tenting, of course). There are 10 of us here. Mosey and Irish we already know. A couple that are doing the Long Trail, and JP and Zane, father and son, who are doing a section of the AT. Zane is 16, and a really nice kid. JP said he is very enthusiastic about hiking. 

Tomorrow we near-o into Rutland, and the Yellow Deli Hiker Hostel. I’m sure it’s going to be an interesting experience. Stay tuned...

A couple of final photos...

I call this “Shrooms with Moss and Rock Part 2”. 

If you zoom in on the newt, you will see it has red spots. This is a red-spotted newt, and is what the red-spotted eft (my little orange friends) turn into after the eft stage. It’s the first one I’ve seen (but probably because they are not so easy to spot as the orange ones).












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