Sunday, July 15, 2012

A Car Show and the Starbucks Fairy

Today turned out to be the most pleasant day of hiking we've had in two weeks, thanks to one thing - rain! Not a hard rain, but nice and steady, and with the thick canopy of trees above us, we just got dripped on occasionally. It cooled off a bit, and felt so much better!
After we packed up and hiked the first 5.5 miles fairly quickly, that brought us into the quaint town of Falls Village, Connecticut, which was having, of all things, a car show right down Main Street! Keith was in heaven. While he perused the shiny beauties, I went to the B & B and snagged a table for three. We ended up having a really wonderful brunch before hitting the trail again.
On the way to the trail, we saw Jaybird under a shade tree by the hydroelectric plant on the river. We knew there was an outdoor shower here that was available to hikers, and everyone is always interested in soap and water when it is available. We all took turns cleaning up a bit. Don't worry - it's all very modest. While we were sitting there, sort of drip drying and enjoying the cool breeze coming with the approaching rain, this young man sort of just appeared out of nowhere, and joined us on the lawn. He was carrying a small wooden tray, carrying a bag, and asked if we were AT thru-hikers. We told him we were. He said he was from Starbucks, and he was passing out samples of their new drink, Refreshers. They are caffeinated fruit flavored drinks. We kind of couldn't believe this Starbucks trail magic??? His store was over an hour away, in Plainville, Connecticut. He decided he was going to share his samples with AT hikers. He poured us all samples, which were ice cold, by the way, and then left us with little powder packs of it to mix into our water bottles. It turned out that he had come to watch a friend of his dive off of a cliff over the river, and decided to hand out the samples here also.
We hiked on and just had a really pleasant day, mainly due to the rain. About 5:00 we hit the road into Salisbury, and walked down to the market there. They had a rather fancy market, and we made pigs of ourselves at their deli.

As we were eating ice cream, Kindle Ninja walked up to buy ice cream. The five of us sat there eating pints of Ben & Jerrys, and a couple of bicyclists were nearby taking a break. One of them asked Jaybird if he was going to eat that whole pint by himself. The guys all told him they had eaten half-gallons no problem at the half-way point, so they knew they'd have no problem with this. They were impressed. As we finished up, we checked the radar on our iPhone weather apps, and a bad storm was moving in. We hightailed it out of town, back to the trail, and threw up tents in the closest tenting place we could find - okay, not exactly a tenting place - we are camped at the very back of a very large cemetary where we will not be seen, just in the woods on the edge of the property. I think Swamprat is not crazy about the location. He just keeps saying, "I just don't want to wake anyone up around here!" I hope an owl doesn't hoot tonight. I'm afraid he'll end up in our tent!

































- Steady and F100
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