Day 20 on the Vermont Long Trail

We woke up early this morning. We did not sleep much through the night. Family Mule and I were on edge for some reason. We started packing up around 6:30. I turned on my phone to check for reception so I could hopefully check in with family. I did not have much reception at all but I had an alert from PayPal! It was actually a couple days old. They suspected fraudulent activity and someone took $1200 out of our account. This was not a good start to the morning. I could not reach them due to the signal so I had to wait until a better signal area. Why people do these types of things just does not make since to me. How do they sleep at night! I was able to get a hold of PayPal and they handled it quickly.

We headed on the trail around 7:15. It was .9 miles to the summit of Mt. Abraham. It was a fun climb with many rock obstacles/climbs . It was cold, windy, and foggy, so we did not have very good views. About 5 minutes after we reached the summit I realized mother nature had decided to visit me. Ugh! At least I was prepared. Roughly 10 minutes later Tiny Turtle asked for the toilet paper. He could not wait until we reached a shelter area. The next thing I know, he is hollering to me for help in what is obviously a dire situation. I get over to him to find the poor boy has soiled ON his pants, socks, and one shoe! A piece of advice, be sure your pants and other articles of clothing are out of the way while squatting in the woods.   Again we were prepared, thankfully!  He had extra clothes to put on. We had a plastic bag for the soiled items and wet wipes for clean up. He said he felt better.  Family Mule was happy he had his morning coffee at this point! I should say morning coffee grounds! He tried to filter his coffee through the fabric of his pant leg. He found out his pants were more waterproof then he realized. His plan did not work so he just drank the grounds and all! Good thing he can eat and drink anything.

We made it to Mt. Ellen. The views were better because the fog was starting to clear up. We found a warming hut and decided to have a short candy bar break inside. That is another good thing about hiking. You can eat almost anything  because you burn so many calories each day. We found a map of Waterbury inside. This is our next resupply spot, so we snapped a picture of it and pressed on.

We found a beautiful overlook and had lunch. It was very windy and chilly. The sun would peak out every once in a while and take the chill away. After we  enjoyed a relaxing lunch we pressed on. We came to Glen Ellen Lodge. The Lodge was .3 miles off trail. We decided to check it out. The walk to the shelter was gorgeous. The view was amazing. The Lodge was a spacious four sided cabin. It had four bunk beds with a table inside. The water source was great! We decided to stay there for the night. We laid on the rock outside and enjoyed the sun. It felt wonderful. We laid out our clothes to dry/air out from the previous days of rain. I made dinner in the lodge. It was a nice family dinner at the table as we have at home.

We thought we had the cabin to ourselves because it was getting late.  Well a hiker showed up. She was very friendly and quiet. She was doing a short weekend hike. She came in and made her bed then went outside to make her dinner. About half hour later another hiker showed up. She was extremely loud! We referenced her as Noisy Girl. We were planning a 5:30 wake up in order to cover the needed miles the next day so we wanted to get some sleep. That did not happen. We had the kids share the bunk above Family Mule and I. This allowed room for the extra hiker. She did not come in and make her bed surprisingly. Instead she sat outside loudly telling hiking stories to the quiet hiker, which was trying to quickly finish her dinner and go to bed. Family Mule opened the door and politely said goodnight as it was getting late and we needed to get rest. This was a subtle hint to quiet down. The loudness continued. We laid on our bunk unavoidably listening to the girl and hoping she would just go to bed soon because we could not sleep. As I stated in a previous post, ear plugs are a necessity if planning to sleep in shelters. This particular site did not have tenting options.  The quiet one came in and laid down.  It is good hiker etiquette to not disturb the other hikers especially when arriving to an area late. The noisy one comes in shortly after, slamming the door. She gets on her top bunk and then begins to blow up her mattress and shine her light all over the cabin. Then decided to pick at her feet while still shining the light over all of us. VERY RUDE! We laid there quietly for as long as possible. After about half an hour of this nonsense, Family Mule jumped up and asked her if he could help her with something as there is obviously a problem and he would like to help her take care of it so everyone can sleep. After that she laid down and shut off her light.