The Dude abides...

7-13-09 day 41
start: Upper Goose Pond Cabin, MA
end: Tom Levarti's House in Dalton, MA
daily mileage: 20.6
total mileage: 546.3

What a great day! I've ranted about the generosity of people to we through-hikers before, but surely, today takes the cake.

We woke up to blueberry pancakes that the caretaker of Upper Goose Pond "Grampy" made for us. Only a few, so not enough to fill, but absolutely delicious. We then hiked a few miles down the trail to a certain road the we'd read about the "cookie lady" residing on - sure enough, just down the road, we enjoyed some delicious free cookies from a kindly old woman named Madelyn.

We're getting excited as we roll into Dalton, because we've heard of a guy named Rob Bird who takes hikers overnight for free there (much like Dick the Mayor of a previous post). So we're quite surprised to find several of our hiker friends (including Whisp!) chilling in the lawn of another guy's house! We were then introduced to Tom Levarti, a kindly older guy who offered to cook us dinner, put us up for the night, and slackpack us 23 miles up the trail!!! So there are TWO people in the little trail town that feed hikers, put them up for free in their house, and drive them wherever they want to go the next morning. And feeding us was no small feat - there were at least 15 people at Tom's for dinner that night (quite an average night, he says!) and we all ate delicious pasta, hot dogs, and even each had ice cream sundaes for dessert! I was even so lucky as to get an extra scoop!

After dinner and showers, we popped in the Big Lebowski. Great movie. The dude abides.