Date: 2003-09-11
From: Crawford Pond

To: Lower Jo-Mary Lake
Miles today: 11.9

Puff Puff & Snappy beat us out this morning. We slept in to let the crowd go first, since we were only going 10-12 miles anyway. Soon after we started hiking we met an older guy: Old Smoky Lonesome.   He told us a great story about his experience in Glasgow when Flanders told him he was from near there. We passed Old Smoky and continued to Cooper Brook Falls Lean-to to read the register and have a snack. Skywalker was there and Old Smoky Lonesome arrived close behind. It was a beautiful shelter spot, but you can't quit after 2.3 miles so we kept going. After 5 more miles we came to a note from Puff & Snappy instructing us to take a right down a blue blazed trail. I was delighted because I had been wanting to fish Cooper Pond and that was just where the trail led.        Puff & Snappy had picked a shady spot near a great spot for fishing. I rock hopped out as far as I could and started casting. Pretty soon, I had a bite. I thought maybe the fish had stolen my worm because I couldn't feel anything on the line, but as I reeled in I saw that I had a little fish on my line. I started yelling, and Flanders, Puff & Snappy ran out to the rocks cheering and took my picture with the tiny (6 inches, but skinny) small mouth bass. I threw him back and as soon as I cast again I had another (a tiny sunfish this time) immediately. At this point, Snappy said, "Maybe we'll eat lunch here after all" so they all brought food out to the rocks. Buck whimpered at the rock hopping, and they helped him to join us. It was a lot harder to cast worrying about hooking my friends, but I kept reeling little fishes in. Puff got one too, but it too was too small. Eventually, it got hot out in the sun and we decided to give up.        We hiked together to a logging road with a bridge over Cooper Brook. Here we found Bree, Trailfrog, Space Monkey, Llama, and Stoker. A Happy Reunion! We stopped for a while and snacked, caught up, and kept moving, picking up Llama and Stoker as we left. The hike was beautiful (as it has been for the last few days) - yellow, orange and red leaves blowing in the trees and crunching on the ground. I love fall.        We got to the Antlers campsite. It was probably the nicest campsite I'd ever seen. The whole thing was on the lake - a peninsula. We could have stopped there, but I wanted to keep going to the other side of the lake where we'd be able to see the sun set over the lake. It didn't take us long to get to the sandy beach and we all went swimming, even Buck. Buck, however, only swims in one direction - toward the shore. I fished some, but my luck had run out for the day. Llama found some fresh water clams and showed Puff and me. So Puff and I went clam hunting and found 18. Flanders set up camp on the beach while I made dinner. Puff made a huge fire on the other side of the beach near a big rock with a nice face for resting one's back. The rock had been in the sun all afternoon so it was warm. Very nice to have a warm back while sitting facing a warm (HOT) fire. We tried to bake some clams in the fire but we didn't have any butter and they didn't bake very well, so we set the others free. We also yelled across the lake for Bree, Space Monkey, and Trailfrog - they'd never passed us, so we figured they stayed at Antler's.        It was a wonderful night - Llama shared his hot chocolate and after the fire Flanders and I retired to our lake-view tarptent.   -Chickenfeet