After weeks on Vermont's Long Trail, three long-time hiking companions — writing as Rock Rabbit, The Historian, and the blog's narrator — said goodbye the only way they know how: inside an airport terminal. For three decades the trio has timed flights to meet each other inside security at airports around the world, so parting in Boston's Logan felt routine rather than final. Just a farewell until next time.
Getting to Boston was its own small ordeal. The Dartmouth Coach bus was stretched past capacity over homecoming weekend, so the group risked the rental car instead — then made things harder by programming the GPS to avoid toll roads. The result: a 20-mile stretch crawled at 20 mph, repeated run-ins with toll lanes despite the settings, and a missed airport approach that forced a full loop before they found an airport hotel within walking distance of their 6 am departures.
The practical lesson for anyone flying home with a backpacking kit: packs compress to carry-on size, but stoves and trekking poles have to go in the hold. Their answer is backpack duffels — heavy, awkward things with one small handle. Salvation came twice in the form of abandoned luggage carts spotted at the curb and later inside the terminal, which they kept overnight in the hotel room. Hikers flying home might do worse than keeping an eye out for a stray trolley.
The flight home turned into a showcase for trail fitness. A weather delay in Boston compressed their Salt Lake City connection to 20 minutes, terminal-end to terminal-end. Rather than queue on the moving walkways, they calculated they could outpace them on foot — and did, sprinting the concourse to board as the last passengers. Without legs conditioned by weeks of hiking, they'd have missed the plane.
Small perks softened the trip: leftover upgrades from years of work travel landed them in first class on the pre-dawn Boston–Salt Lake City flight, where breakfast included raw salmon at dawn, which they described as spectacular. Then it was a short hop north over the Rockies to Montana, where an older friend who had handled their resupply mailings picked them up and asked, only half-joking, whether they were finally done with these adventures. They agreed the next trip won't be so demanding.
The homecoming had one more test: Arugula, the cat they adopted after their 2025 Appalachian Trail hike, initially bolted at the sight of a stranger in the house. A few hours, some freeze-dried minnows, and he was sprawled across their laps holding their arms — seemingly to prevent any further departures.
Why should travellers care? Mostly because this is what long-distance hiking actually looks like at the edges: not the trail, but the logistics around it — buses that sell out in peak weekends, gear that can't fly as carry-on, tight connections survived on hiker legs. It's a warm, honest portrait of how thru-hiking friendships work across decades and continents, and a useful nudge for anyone planning to fly home after a long trail.
Story via The Trek.
