31 Aug - 2 Sept

Friday, 31 August, Day 52 AT v2.0, 9.6 miles, Dream Lake at 2600 feet in NH. By Crocadilly -currently camped out in a thunder storm on the banks of Dream Lake. After a leisurely morning of coffee and puttering about the campsite we finally had to leave.  This was our last morning at Dolly Copp and for some reason I am going to really miss it! We won't see Tailbone or Mango or the boys for three days now as the nearest road to meet up is 31 miles away. 31 miles to my next shower and I haven't had one since 8 days ago! Yuk!!! I feel tired smelly and horrible but know we have to keep going! I am enjoying the trail no end but it is sometimes easy to forget how taxing it is.  We are almost in Maine after all and now have less than three hundred miles to go!  We were going to hike with Riff Ralf but he had to resupply and we felt we should get going being the slower of our fellow hikers! The next three days are going to be hard and we will be crossing the state line but we will also be hiking through the supposedly hardest mile on the trail. So we got going for the first time before most of our compatriots! Old smoke and Log hadn't left town by the time we left and we guess they are behind us unless they stayed in town and we assume everyone else is in front. Today the pace felt slow again and there were some uphills but nothing like what we have climbed before and there were proper paths albeit they were riddled in some parts with rocks and roots! We summited two smaller peaks but I don't think either of us had the inclination to stop and admire the views so much. Today walking felt a bit like a chore - a means to an end to get to Maine. There was nothing new or exciting to report and it was cloudy and rained pretty much for the whole afternoon. We passed some stunning lakes at the top of the two hills we climbed - the paths are better marked now and I am not so worried about getting lost! We bumped into Goman, a lovely older guy who is known as "grumpy old man" but has a real twinkle in his eye and plays on the grumpiness!  He was doing good. Together with bad penny another German it was comforting to know we weren't out on the trail alone. We had planned to get to a shelter 12 miles in but as long as we did ten we were okay. I got wet again as I slipped on a tree trunk across a swathe of mud and ended up to my knee in a muddy smelly mess! At least I will smell worse now hahaha! We have three days to do 31 miles…Tough miles at that! We were on track to do our 12 miles when got caught at the top of this hill where Dream Lake is as the skies suddenly darkened and the thunder and rain rolled in. We pitched the tent in record time and climbed in just as the heavens opened. That was two hours ago - it's been quite the storm but we are all snuggled and warm wading through our supplies of snacks and hoping to cook shortly! We managed to put the tent up with a great ruddy rock in the middle but apart from that all is well! Hope it stops raining by the morning. It was only 30% chance of rain this afternoon...but as Scott says in hiker math that means 100%! he hasn't been wrong yet!

Our quickly constructed camo site

Trying to stay dry

Saturday, 1 September, Day 53 AT v2.0, 8 miles, Grafton Notch Campground. By PapaWolf - We made it through the night relatively dry. We could not be bothered to cook in the rain last night so we started the morning with some delicious "breakfast rice" as we dried out the tent and our kit. The weather was on our side so we had a great morning. We started hiking around 9:30 and found some rock faces and hills that where wet and a bit more difficult than I was hoping for. J We did pass the 1900 mile  point on the trail which someone marked which was cool.  For me that meant I had covered 1300 miles of the trail and 600 miles for Crocadilly. We have yellowblazed a bit so we have walked 50 to 80 miles less than that, but still a neat mile marker to reach.  We made it over Mt. Success and discover there was a short side trail that would get us to a road where we could be picked up by Tailbone. The road option would get us off the wet rocks (Crocadilly fell 5 times, but NO, this is not the reason we decided to take the side trail, she wanted to keep going), we could dry out our stuff, catch up with Rampage and Gumby, and I could rest my feet which were really giving me a bit of a problem. So not a difficult decision so off we went down the side trail. What we did not realize was that poor Tailbone had to drive approx 14 miles down a gravel road to pick us up…oops. J Fortunately, Gumby kept here company and Crocadilly and I passed the time talking to some fairly colorful locals who were very much enjoying their Labor Day Saturday. We got picked up and headed to the Sunday River Brewing Company where we met Rampage and Mango and had an excellent dinner and some lovely bevies. We got to the camp site after dark, set up our tent and headed to bed.

     Sunrice on the mountain...drying out our stuff. :)
 

The 1900 Mile marker.

Sunday, 2 September, Day 54 AT v2.0, 0 miles, Grafton Notch Campground. By PapaWolf - We awoke this morning at 6am and were debating how far we were going to walk today. We were out of the tent making coffee when, with a forecast of "10% chance of rain", it started raining. So we jumped back in the tent, with our coffee, and sat there for an hour waiting for it to clear. When it did clear, I had decided to take the day off and Croacadilly had decided she would as well so she could work on some job applications which were due in a few days. Gumby and Rampage were planning on going but we could all tell they were pretty exhausted after their 21 mile day and hard 3 days of hiking. Well…we kept making coffee and soon we were all taking zeros. J We headed into a town and got lunch and resupplied. We went back to the campsite and had an excellent zero day playing horseshoes and enjoying some beverages followed by a campsite "taco night" which was excellent!

Waiting for the rain to stop.

Horseshoes and Beer...pretty good zero day