Klauks to Katahdin: Trail Angel

Day: 118 (July 21)
Starting location: Dalton, MA
Ending location: North Adams, MA
State: MA
Miles today: 23.3
Miles total: 1,582.9

After a great stay with the Moynihans, Patrick dropped us off at the trail head in Dalton, MA. After our goodbyes, we went into a local breakfast place to get one last good meal before hitting the trail. It just so happened that many other hikers had the same idea and we found about 10 other thru hikers including Daytripper and Thunder. It turned out that they stayed at Tom Levardi's house in downtown Dalton last night.

Tom is a local trail angel that allows hikers to tent in his back yard, stay in his bedrooms, use the house shower, and provides laundry and shuttles to the trail. For all of these services, Tom will not accept a single cent. Tom is hands down the most exordinary trail angel that we have incountered through our travels. To put this into perspective you must understand that he is accomodating complete strangers that smell and look like trash. Today I contimplated how many complete strangers my parents welcomed into their home. After thinking for a while, I always came up with the same number...zero. Tom has been doing this for over 10 years and meeting him has been one of the highlights of our trip. Before starting our journey, many people tried to convince me that I needed to carry a gun. After meeting Tom, I now know I made the right decision.

Daytripper and Thunder were going to slackpack south 23 miles from North Adams back to Dalton through Tom's shuttle. It didn't take much convincing for us to decide to do the same. Tom loaded 9 hikers & packs into his jeep and drove us the 30 minutes to North Adams. We had a great hike today and we hit Mt Greylock which is the highest point in Massachusetts.

After a long day, we reached Dalton just before dark around 8:30pm. We walked straight over to Jacobs Food & Spirits for dinner and drinks. After dinner we walked to Tom's house where over 10 other hikers were staying the night.