Miles today: 10.4
Total miles: 1565.5
Today was such an unexpectedly good day. First off, I didn’t know it was daylight savings until I couldn’t fall asleep last night and was messing around on my phone at midnight and found out online. That made me happy and I enjoyed my extra hour of sleep. In town I tried to talk to my friend Paul, who is in Madagascar and who I haven’t talked to since June. We tried to Skype but the interet connection wasn’t the best so I only briefly saw him but it was so good to hear from an old friend.
Before we hit the trail , delta and I went to Dairy Queen (for the third time in the less than 24 hours we’ve been in town). We ate there and ended up meeting a middle aged Canadian couple who had hiked northbound this year. They were super interesting in that they didn’t hike together. Well sometimes they did but more often they hiked at their own paces and met up every so often in towns along the way. The guy, Jelly (his wife is peanut butter, how adorable), was also training during his hike for a 100 Mile race so he did some crazy stuff like hike ahead then run back to where his wife was. Anyway, they were so friendly and nice to talk to. They are currently driving around and going back to trail towns etc to see places theyd been to on their hike. They ended up giving us a ride back to the trailhead. Their next stop was Woods hole Hostel, which was ten miles away ad where delta and I planned to stay tonight. Since they were going there anyway, they offered to take our packs there to make our hike easier. I immediately jumped at the chance to slackpack while delta politely declined since he sets super high standards for himself about the rules he hikes by. Ha I have absolutely no problem giving away my pack for the day and only carrying my water bottles.
I had such a nice ten mile walk to woods hole without my pack. It was like a little walk in the woods!! If only every day were like this. On the way to woods hole delta and I ran into some guy taking a photo of a red chair by the trail. He said he’s a bed and breakfast owner and the chairs being passed along various B&Bs and came all the way from Cape cod. He actually took our photo with it and said he’s going to put it on the Red Chair Travels website. In other words, I became a celebrity today.
We got to woods hole around 445. The Canadian couple, peanut butter and jelly were going to stay the night too. There was also a big Irish family staying (not hikers). It was two sisters that now live in the states with their American husbands, their kids (4 total) and their parents. An adorable family reunion. Woods hole is this awesome log cabin and separate bunk house. They have a farm and have animals, including chickens and goats. They also apparently lead yoga and meditation sessions and give massages but I unfortunately didn’t partake in those.
I had such a great evening there nonetheless. I enjoyed talking with the Canadian couple–they actually are amongst my favorite people I’ve met this entire trip. They are so kind but also funny and sarcastic and by the end of the night we were having a blast poking fun at each other. The Irish family was also really interesting and it was a nice change of pace being around little kids since I never see kids being on the trail all the time. We had delicious homemade pizza with salad for dinner and before we ate we all went around and said something we are thankful for. It was such an international mix of people and we were all so different but it was like a little family meal. By the end of the meal my face hurt from smiling and laughing so much. We had to sleep outside in the bunkhouse without heat with a temperature of 31 degrees, but I went to bed with a smile on my face after an all around great day.