Date: 2018-08-28
From: Stealth camp past Sabbath Day Pond Lean-to

To: Piazza Rock Lean-to
Miles today: 9.5

We woke at 5:30am by alarm. We had a plan to get more food when we got to highway ME 4 and knew it would take some time, so getting out early was important. The plan had changed from hitchhiking into the town of Rangeley, 8 miles away, to walking up the highway for 0.2 miles to a hostel.The application Spider has on his phone (Guthook) uses GPS to pinpoint where we are on the AT, but it also points out things of interest like water sources, road crossings and hostels. Most hostels have food that they sell to guests but will also sell it to walk-ins. We would be walk-ins and hoped they had food to sell.As we began to pack, Spider commented on the black skies. 5 minutes later it began to rain...huge drops, fast. We scurried around trying to get all important gear protected from getting wet. We finally hit the trail at 6:45am with a wet tent and wet raingear.Within 20 feet of where we camped was a perfect moose footprint in the mud in the trail. There's a good chance a moose walked by our tent last night and we didn't know it. Still haven't seen one.Within 10 minutes, the rain stopped and the sun eventually came out...tough weather to figure out. The day was full of short ups and downs and lots of mud and bogs. The mud can be 6-12 inches in depth and the bogs can be up to 2 feet deep. We spend lots of time figuring out how to skirt these if trail crews have not built plank walkways over them. Most don't have planks or the old planks and logs need to be replaced. One of the many bogs is the picture of the day.When the sun came out, the heat went up and so did the humidity. Temps were almost to 90 degrees and the humidity was probably close to the same. I take back my complaining about the cold weather in previous journal entries.One of the things we saw today that we hadn't seen since New York was sweating rocks. The trail is covered in rock but a few are wet. It looks like they are sweating. Why? It turns out that they are large rocks with only a tip showing. Deep in the earth the rock cools. The cooled tip of the rock cools the air around it and on humid days the water condenses on the rock like it does on the outside of a glass of ice water...sweating rocks...slippery rocks.We made it to highway ME 4 by 2:40pm and walked the 0.2 miles to the hostel, The Hiker's Hut. They welcomed us with open arms and showed us their box of food for sale. $6.50 later we had all the food we needed to extend our hike an extra day...Whew! They also offered us some watermelon to snack on. Wow, was that good. Fresh fruit and vegetables are something we miss while on the trail.We hiked back down the road to the AT, then hiked the 1.8 miles to our destination lean-to arriving at 5:10pm. We are now in position to assault the 2000ft climb of Saddleback Mtn. tomorrow. Spider's muscle strain bothered him a little at the beginning of the day but by the end he didn't even feel it. Maybe there is something to the coach saying "Walk it off" when a player injures himself!Getting in early gave us the luxury of setting up the tent and lying down for an hour before dinner. Out of the tent at 7pm, we ate dinner, then to bed by 7:45pm.