Ah Vermont - recap on the Appalachian Trail

Hiking through Vermont on the Appalachian Trail was a lovely experience.

We started off by crossing the bridge over the Connecticut River after walking through our first significant town of Hanover, New Hampshire. The state line runs through the middle of the river.

After crossing the bridge and walking along streets for a few miles through Norwich, we wound our way back to wooded trails.

Forest walking didn’t last long before we were back out on country roads. It was a refreshing reprieve to walk in open areas, see a bit of civilization and history along the way. Not to mention joyful to walk on flat, even ground after the extremes of Maine and New Hampshire.

We ducked in and out of fields, farmland, and forests.

While every state had something a little different to offer by way of privies (Maine had the best btw!), this one in Vermont was by far the most interesting architecturally speaking. It was moved to the campsite where we stayed from its original location at Cloudland, now private property

We loved starting to see more random bits of history. While these will continue to pop up more frequently as we head south, this was one of the first rock walls on the trail.

Vermont really felt like it wanted us to enjoy walking through and have a pleasant time on its trail.

And then we hit the Green Mountains. And the rest of the state (the majority really) was back to steep climbs and rocky terrain. Not all bad rocks though, we hit this funny rock garden area around the time my brother and his family visited us on the trail. My adorable nephew was fun to hike with, albeit for a short distance.

Killington Mountain, the highest peak in Vermont, was a nice climb and had a pretty spectacular pay off.

A few mountains in addition to Killington are ski resorts in winter, but I enjoyed the warmer weather (and moody fog in this case) instead of cold snow.

The remaining mountain peaks culminated with a bonus stair workout at the top. Since most weren’t above tree line, they had fire towers you could climb to get a full view. Always worth the extra steps in my opinion.

Aside from hiking up and down mountains all day, we had some great camp spots, including this stealth spot next to a beaver pond.

On several occasions, the trail reminded us we still had a long ways to go.

Although by the end of Vermont we walked 593.5 miles, there are still 1596.5 to go. Daunting, but looking forward to seeing what Massachusetts has to offer!