10 miles (64 Total)
Bromley Mountain back to Manchester then back to Bromley then on to Styles Peak
43.27373, -72.93817
Carolyn didn’t feel well at all last night and had a strange bite on the back of her head, near the base of her neck. It looked like a potential tick bite. Her symptoms came on suddenly: severe headache, nausea, and some bathroom issues. It had us pretty worried.
We went to bed and decided to make a decision in the morning on what to do.
Morning came and Carolyn didn’t feel much better. We made the decision to hike back down the mountain and head into Rutland, 30 miles north of Manchester to get it checked out. Luckily there was a bus that linked Manchester and Rutland, so all we needed to do was get a hitch into Manchester again, which was easy to do. The nice lady that picked us up was our first hitch by a transgender individual.
We finally made it to urgent care and the doctor told us it wasn’t a tick bite. That was a relief but it was unfortunate we had to make negative miles and lose most of the day to come to that decision. Carolyn was starting to feel better, and after eating a bunch of McDonalds we decided to try and hitch back to Manchester, since the next bus wasn’t for a few hours.
Carolyn made a sign that said “Manchester” out of the tick literature the hospital gave us, and we stood out on busy route 7 by a shopping mall. About 15 minutes went by and eventually a nice lady pulled over and offered to drive us all the way back to the trail. We lucked out.
The woman was originally from Tehachapi, California, which is a trail town on the Pacific Crest Trail. It was quite serendipitous receiving a ride from someone from Tehachapi, because we had to backtrack several miles out of the mountains on the PCT last year, as well, to go back to Tehachapi to take care of some medical issues we were having on that trail.
I’m not sure if things like this are random or planned out somehow. Encounters like these certainly make you think about the possibility of non-random events; as if fate may actually be a thing.
Maybe.
Back out on the trail we climbed back up Bromley and made it 4 additional miles to Styles peak, where there was a small cleared out area to camp. We met a hiker named Blue Suit on the way (he wears a blue jump suit while he hikes), and he entertained us with stories for a few miles as we climbed the peak.
