We have settled into Schenectady to visit family and recover from our last nine day walk across MA and VT.  Our friends Jane and Bob completed the Appalachian Trail on the last leg of this walk.  Wonderful! We hope to finish the Northeast part of the AT over the next week and a half with weather at least half as good as during this last walk.  Sunny and cool every day with chilly nights.  Superb hiking weather.  

We found MA to be much easier walking than ME and NH and even VT.  The dry weather also hardened a lot of mud, changing it from "sauce" to "dough."  It is much easier to walk across dough than sauce, and even the roots cease to be slippery when they are dry.  We enjoyed views of both yellow-bellied flycatchers and Philadelphia vireos which are special to see for folks from Pennsylvania.  Also saw lots of migrating warblers, but still have missed Tennessee and Connecticut this year.  Note:  Both birds are rare in their name states, but not as rare as the Philadelphia vireo in Philadelphia.  

The shortening days make the hiking more difficult.  Too cold to sit out after dark, the hikers retreat to bed by eight o'clock and rise at first light at six a.m.  That is still some ten hours of sleep.  Our muscles love the rest, but our brains don't need so much.  The dreams become vivid in the last couple of hours.  

As elsewhere the trail is lovely in southern New England but the scenery is not as dramatic as in northern New England.  The view from Mt. Greylock in MA, however, was fantastic.  There are fewer hikers on the trail, but on only one day did we encounter no one.  The number of south-bound hikers is surprising. None gave a good answer as to what they will do at the end of November when the days are only eight or nine hours long.  We suspect many will give up.  They may find snow in the Smokies too.  So much better to hike from Georgia in the spring.

Our travel went well.  The easier trail resulted in less falls, and we have become stronger hikers, but still don't like to travel much more than ten miles a day with the full pack.  On the last nine-day leg we stopped twice for bed, bath, and served food.  The one stop at the Pilgrim Motel in Lee, MA was typical. We found the best pizza shop and best breakfast restaurant in town.  The other at the Harbor House Inn at Cheshire, MA was wonderful.  The Polish-American owner was one of our best hosts on the trail.  She came home, heard we had walked a mile to a restaurant, called us there, and picked us up when we were done.  That was not service, it was simply gracious.

As luck would have it the weather turned stormy the night after we stepped off the trail.  Yesterday a cold rain and wind swept across MA.  We were thankful to off the trail.  We'll be on the trail again on Monday, perhaps in more autumn sunshine.