Date: 2018-07-27
From: Hanover, NH

To: Moose Mountain Shelter
Miles today: 11.0

We awoke to our alarm at 7am...lots of things to do! We first repacked our backpacks to be packs for the trail and not suitcases for the airplane by taking out our trekking poles, moving food and raingear to be accessible, etc. We took showers, our last for awhile, then went to the lobby for our free continental breakfast at 8am. Unfortunately you get what you pay for: watered down orange juice, watered down coffee, watered down waffle mix and stale Cheerios. But we found enough to fill us up. The best part of the breakfast was the other guest there having breakfast. It was a guy who had just finished hiking the section of the AT that we were about to hike. So we picked his brain! Really special, the guy just finished section-hiking the AT, over 25 years.Spider had voluntered to go get the fuel for our stove (airlines prohibit the transportation of stove fuel so we always have to find a source at our destination). His plan was to use the local free bus system to a nearby hiker supply store. So while ET continued her conversation with the other hiker, Spider headed to the bus stop. Given he would have to change buses both directions, the speed at which he was able to do this would determine what time we could get on the trail. Fortunately, all connections worked well and Spider returned by 9:30am. We got dressed for the trail, finished packing our packs, checked out of the motel and caught the 10:30am bus to downtown Hanover.We officially stepped back on the AT at 10:40am. Hooray! It started with a walk through the streets of downtown Hanover. Once at the edge of town, the trail entered the woods and we began to climb, steeply in some places. Our packs were full of 6 days of food and our bodies were city-soft, so the miles came very slowly. We maintained our usual pattern of hiking for an hour, then taking a 20 minute break to rest and eat a little food. We calculated that we were moving at about 1.5 mph. That made it a long day. As we hiked, we were passed by all the twenty-somethings who are thru-hiking the AT. We also met Otto, an older man hiking the AT from New Jersey to Maine. He too passed us by!Things were going well until about 3pm when the predicted thunderstorms hit. We started hearing thunder at around noon, but it was far away so we hoped it would pass us by. No such luck. We stopped to put the rain covers on our packs but decided to not put on our raingear. We were already soaked from sweat with the 80 degree weather, and putting on raingear only makes us hotter. So on we hiked in the light rain..then heavier rain...then buckets of rain! The rain lasted for about 2 hours. The trail had been wet from rain on previous days, but now it was a river! We waked cautiously because of wet, slippery roots and rocks, and then we had to walk on the edges of the trail to avoid the deep water.We finally made it to Mink Brook at 5:30pm, about 2 miles from our destination shelter. Unfortunately, all reports Spider had read was that the water source at the shelter had dried up, so we needed to get our water at Mink Brook. We filtered a 2 gallons of water then headed out..uphill! It was a slow trudge up South Moose Mtn to the shelter (no we didn't see any moose!)...arriving at 8pm just as it was getting dark. We quickly set up our tent and ate our dinner by using our headlamps. Ironically, we found out that the water source at the shelter was once again flowing due to the recent rains..oh well! To bed by 9pm...we are finally back on schedule.