Date: 2005-09-03
From: Bear Mountain New York

To: White Mountains New Hampshire
Miles today: 400.0

What a long time since our last entry in New Jersey!So much has happened in the past few weeks! Since the last entry, Sunflower and I have made our way through New York, Connecticut, and part of Massachusetts as well. We hiked hundreds of miles in those weeks and did little else as we made a mad dash to the Massachusetts state line where we were meeting Sunflower¢s parents: Doug and Kathy, and her Aunt Pauline too. In that mad dash to meet them on September 26, we experienced a pleasant change in the weather; our first glimpses of the trail in New England, and a big increase in prices from everything like food to hotel rooms. I also got to experience my first trip to the Emergency Room in a few months! The trail towns in Connecticut and Massachusetts are picture perfect little New England towns with many little shops and delis. They contain many tourists, walking through the town just looking at the sights. It¢s quite a change to walk through these towns instead of the more humble towns of the earlier parts of the hike. Near the New York / Connecticut border, Sunflower and I were about to complete a twenty mile day, and we were crossing a road around mile 16, and we came to a cooler in the trail. We were excited to open it and find; sodas, beer, and sandwiches, and we sat down indulging in this bit of trail magic and then we saw a car pull up. The couple in the car got out with goodies and they were the couple that refills the trail magic cooler up each day with goodies. After chatting for a while with us, they invited us and a few other hikers back to their lovely home in Connecticut for the night where we could swim in their pool, eat a great dinner, sleep for the night and then eat a great breakfast. Sunflower and I were having a blast swimming in the pool and then it got interesting. Sunflower and I were goofing off in the pool doing different swim strokes and I was doing the butterfly, and I managed to cut my head on the wall of the pool when I was coming out of the water. I figured it wasn¢t that bad until I got out and everyone was staring at me like a chicken with ten heads. Blood started pouring out and soon even my mouth and chest were covered. There was a lot of blood. So after cleaning it a little, and eating dinner, I decided to go to the ER and get stitches. I am glad I thought ahead and paid the extra money to keep health insurance, because a lot of hikers don¢t. Not having Health Insurance was never an option for me. I just didn¢t figure I would get injured in a pool.Well, we made it Salisbury to meet her parents on the 26th and we were more than exhausted, we pushed ourselves extremely hard, and I had to hike with my stitches in and with no sleep for a week, but we did it. It was great to have her parents there for a few days slackpacking us before the trip to New Hampshire. We got to hike on Saturday and Sunday without our packs on make up some miles, and we definitely enjoyed that. On Monday, we stuffed our gear into the minivan and headed up to New Hampshire for the start of our flip-flop hike. Now we¢re in New Hampshire at Sunflower¢s house and we are finally in The White Mountains, which are the most beautiful thing I have seen yet. They are magnificent. We get to hike in the days, and for the past two days, we have been close enough to come back here to her home to sleep, which is a fantastic option.We will spend the next month heading up to Maine and from the trail¢s Northern terminus of Katahdin we¢ll be jumping back down to make up the section in Vermont that we missed so we could jump up here and hit the good weather before it becomes blizzard-like. More adventures wait. Take it easy everyone.Bottle-RocketP.S. Sunflower is standing here next to me and wants to write something, but its 10:00 at night and we have a huge day ahead of us tomorrow. Her writing is a lot more scrupulous than mine and she writes much better than I, which requires more time. Therefore,Alas, Etc... being the slave driver I am, I am forcing us to go to bed for the night so we're well prepared for the Franconia Ridge Trail in 12 hours, which is arguably the most amazing triumphant, awe-inspiring, BIG, above treeline trail we will do on this entire hike. So basically, Sunflower says, "Hi!" to everyone.