waitsfield, vt

so a lot's happened:

we went to the bromely thrill zone, where i totally crushed the alpine slides. we only rode once, due to cost, but also due to impending thunderstorms for which they kept shutting down the lift. then we walked up the ski trail to the top of bromley and played around on the ski lifts, ate some left-overs from the green mountain house and then watched the sunset from the lookout tower.

we walked from there to big branch shelter the next day, which is the same hike i did a year prior, only this time without the rain and impending death and doom. no trudging through ankle deep standing water, or walking over a ridge with lightening crashing all around. needless to say, this time was much nicer. on the way, at peru peak shelter, we ran into sam and darcey, aka swami and duckfeet, with whom john hiked last year, who are now working for the GMC leading trail maintenance crews.

we camped right by the river that night, and here's the crazy story from that: so chance apparently has been practicing swinging some stress balls around on string with he intention of 'eventually lighting them on fire.' so obviously we just convinced him that that night was the eventually he had been waiting for (even though he'd only been working on it for 3 days and still frequently hit himself wih them). so we soaked the balls in white gas and waited for darkness, then had him swing them around while standing on a rock in the river. that was fun, but ended pretty quick, after the strings got tangled and one of them was burned through. the fireball flung straight up, and landed on the rock and rolled into the river, so luckily there were no casualties.

eventually we landed in rutland, and stayed at the twelve tribes hostel, which was fun, but only for a night. i got a creepy 'women are slaves' vibe from them, and also, they actually make you work for your work for stay, which is not so great for the relaxation part of a zero. the highlights of the rutland series of zeroes include: long trail brewery, thai star, pico peak alpine slides, meeting a thru-hiker's town girl who drove up from palmerton and turns out went to the same college and graduated the same class as john.

and then we were no longer on the AT.

and to make a long story short: we accidentally took a blue blaze off of breadloaf mountain, and didn't realize it til we'd already walked nearly 2 miles down, when we were supposed to be up on the ridge. needless to say we had to truncate that day, which ended in us staying with bobcat (AT '07) here in waitsfield. she put up last night and now tonight, and today slacked us between lincoln gap and appalachian gap, only 11 miles, but not a very easy walk. the stretch goes over sugarbush and mad river glen ski resorts, which are the 5 or so peaks of lincoln mtn, and gen. stark mtn., respectively.

tomorrow will see us to burlington for a day, and then down to rutland (again) for the start of the long trail festival. secret surprise in store for those making the trek!! can't wait!!