Date: 2013-07-14
From: Moxie Shelter

To: Stealth Camp by Kennebec River Ferry
Miles today: 18.0

July 14th, day 8. Moxie shelter to stealth camp by kennebec river ferry crossing.standard Maine day by this point. Slept in til 6 30 for a full 9 hours of sleep. Beautiful. Did get woken up in the middle of the night a few times, once in a pool of over heated sweat, and then again later to pull the covers as it has gotten too cold. Another time was to what sounded like a pack of howling wolves. and finally at 5am a group of friends camping near the shelter woke everyone up by singing happy birthday to one of their group members. I grumpily went back to sleep.The hiking was flat with two big mountainous bumps, moxie bald and pleasant pond mountain. In the morning I got to hike with mdot for a while at his nice slow pace and talk gear and life but mostly gear. after that I set off to catch woody who had one of his stupidly early starts.At the top of pleasant pond mountain (at which there was no pond, nor was the climb pleasant due to a dozen or so false summits) I finally caught up with him and we enjoyed a nice snack break. I also got the chance to shuffle some of the down in the quilt back to its proper baffles, since they had shifted a bit with the open baffle design. I think when I get home I'll sew em up so the down stays put and when I order the next one I'll ask if the guy who does them can fully seal the baffles. The migrating down has been more irksome than helpful.The rest of the day was a downhill into caratunk, though woodys knee was acting up despite all the ibuprofen he had been popping like candy. By the end I was feeling it in my left knee as well as some raw patches on the top off my big toes from where my mud caked boots weren't able to flex well enough to avoid rubbing. Even throwing on tape hadn't helped much.Eventually we made it to the road and caught a quick hitch (less than 5 minutes) 2 miles west to northern outfitters where we ate and ate and ate at their pub. Nachos, chili burger, and brownie Sunday were all consumed.finally at 8 30 after 2 hours of me and woody stuffing our faces and shooting the shit it was time to find a spot to hang so me and woody started walking back down the road towards the ferry crossing we would be using at 9am tomorrow. It was too dark to hitch so we walked for a mile and a half until we found A nice grove of trees up a little ridge between the road and the kennebec river to hang. No bear bagging tonight and the weather looks so promising we don't even have tarps up. Downside is one of my water bottles rolled down the hill into the kennebec never to be seen again. Poop. Upside is I went a full day without stepping in a stream or mud puddle.Tomorrow is sleeping in, a morning ferry, then a pretty flat 22 miles to the shelter right before bigelow mountain, seeing me up for a tough 16 miles the next day into Stratton.during dinner conversion with woody I learned a few things. One is about all sorts of random birds though that's kind of in one ear out the other. Another is semi related, but the pack of howling wolves I heard multiple times last night is infact just a loon. Woody made fun of me. I contend they have crossbred with wolves to create the loon wolf, which travel in packs and hunt careless hikers. We also talked about good and favorite movies, but I can't take anything he said seriously because he doesn't like/hasn't seen any Pixar movies. Up, wall e, and finding Nemo are all top class movies.we also talked about writing. He's in the process of writing a book using his AT adventures as the catalyst/lens fin which to tell his stories (atleast that's how I understood it) more a la bill Bryson. Compare that to my writing which is far more self centered and technical (dry), and which at this point I'm sort of hoping shapes up to be a guide for people looking to hike the AT who haven't hiked much or at all before. That way yall can hopefully learn from the many mistakes I've made as I've hiked along. I do want to make sure I cover more than just the weather, trail conditions, injuries, and the names of people I've met, but I don't want to ramble on in my mediocre writing style about random topics. I guess I'm at a writing crossroads or something. Curse you woody! These have also started taking longer to write, up to as much as 45 minutes which cuts onto my precious beauty sleep time. We'll see what happens tomorrow I guess