Day 144, miles today - 13.5, total - 1,997.7

August 9, 2013

Spaulding Mountain Lean-to to ME 27, Stratton, ME.

I woke up this morning at 5:30 am. The two guys in the shelter were awake. They were eating and getting ready to leave. There was a light rain at that time. By 6:00 there was a hard rain. I was glad we were in a shelter.

At 6:00 I  started working on my blog. B-Rocket was sound asleep. We planned to do 13.5 miles today, so we could afford to wait out the rain for a little while. There were two camp groups tenting near the shelter. One was a group of ten girls from NJ.  They left around 7:00 while it was still raining very hard. The other, was a group of ten girls from Canada. They ate breakfast at the front of the shelter protected from the rain. There were two adults with the girls. They spoke in French to each other. B-Rocket had woke up, and the two of us laid in our sleeping bags listening to the girls. They are fifteen years old. We talked to some of the girls and adults about their hike. The Canada girls left at 8:00, shortly after the rain had all but stopped. We started hiking at 8:30. 

Soon after we started hiking there was a light rain, which would continue for the rest of the day.

We had two big ups today. The first was as soon we left the shelter. It was 900 ft. over Spaulding Mountain. It was pretty slow going. We saw Bulldog on trail. He had tented a few miles south of the shelter. He had started hiking during the hard rain.

                                                                      B-Rocket filtering water

We stopped for a lunch break before our next big up. Eating during a light rain was less than ideal, but we made it work. After lunch we had an 1,800 up to the top of South Crocker Mountain. It was extremely steep in some sections. The last four miles today were pretty good trail.

B-Rocket wore her garbage bag rain skirt part of the time today. I have one, but have yet to use it.

When we got to the ME 27 road crossing we were going into Stratton. There's a parking lot at the road. We saw a few people there, so we approached them in hopes of getting a ride. A section hiker offered to drive us into town. He dropped us off at the small grocery store. While there we saw Mud Mouth, Yard Sale, Gonzo and Rainbow Braid. After buying five days of food we went next door to the Stratton Diner to eat. B-Rocket's mother picked us up there. 

Along with Jamey was B-Rocket's  sister Emily, and Emily's boyfriend. We are staying at a camp fifteen minutes from town.  This camp is super nice. It belongs to a friend of Jamey's. We were able to take a shower, and Jamey washed all of our clothes. I bought a bottle of Moxie soft drink. It's a New England soft drink. It has a very different taste. It would definitely take several bottles to acquire a taste for it.

We will be back on trail in the morning. We only have 188.2 miles to go. The forecast calls for a few days of dry weather.