We woke up early and broke camp in an effort to beat the forecasted rain that was to arrive at 11:00.  We only had eight miles to Manchester Vermont, so we had little problem hiking the eight miles.  As we were told by a south bounder, the muddy bogs continued for the first four of the eight miles and then transitioned into some fairly easy hiking.  Other than some rocks and tree roots, the up and downs were manageable and the weather held.  

We hit the road crossing and hitched a ride with a dude from Massachusetts.  The town blew up all of my preconceived ideas about Vermont.  It’s a ski resort town with all sorts of rich “mass holes”, as folks in Vermont and New Hampshire like to refer to them, driving around in BMWs and Ferraris from luxury outlet to luxury outlet. Not what we call hiker friendly.  I thought about taking my smelly ass into the Armani outlet to see if they had any bandanas.  We settled for lunch at a Thai restaurant.  After completing our resupply errands, I settled into a bar and grill just in time for the food poisoning from the Thai restaurant to kick in.  It hit Dancing Bear 20 minutes before me and we both barely made it back to our accommodations before various curries reentered the atmosphere.

I won’t bore you with the details that followed other than to say we were looking forward to happier trails.