Date: 2017-08-25
From: Gentian Pond campsite

To: stealth site just before Mahoosuc Notch
Miles today: 11.2
Weather: broken clouds

We're in MAINE!!!!!!!So far it is cold, muddy, rocky, hard, and beautiful!Last night I was completely annoyed by the SOBOs who came in late, set up near us, and wouldn't shut up, even after it was dark and past hiker midnight. It was so obnoxious. We got up this morning before the motormouths and Mother Nature gave them a taste of their own medicine by being super loud as she packed up. Then it was back to the bogs for our first climb of the day. The ground has been so wet. You do all kinds of contortions along the edges of the trail, pushing yourself into trees, trying to avoid stepping into the swamps of sadness (ARRRRRTAX!!!!). But sooner or later, the mud gets you. My whole damn left shoe (the one with the hole in it) sunk in to my ankle. Naturally after this happened...I took a photo of it.When we got up to peaks, it was dark, cold, and windy, but still pretty. We sang songs (badly) to entertain ourselves and distract ourselves from the hard climbs. (Thank you, Mother Nature, for getting "Yummy, yummy, yummy, I've got love in my tummy" stuck in my head for DAYS. Only after I got wifi again could I look it up and figure out what it was. Why on earth do we know this 1968 song?)And then finally - the state boundary marker for Maine!!!!! The sign itself was anticlimactic ¢ barely held up by a pile of rocks, the font the same as the other signs ¢ but we were so excited! I remember three summers ago, when I started hiking in Georgia and Maine seemed impossibly far away (thousands of miles, in fact!). The reality of finally crossing into my last state, having traversed 13 others! The last state! This is where Katahdin is! This is MAINE!We took tons of pictures and Mother Nature had celebratory Pop Rocks. Speaking of food, my hunger today was off the charts. All I want to do is eat. I wonder if the cool temperatures are contributing to it, having to burn extra calories to stay warm? All I know is I ate two of those Trader Joe's bars, one covered in a packet of peanut butter, and an entire thing of bacon jerky, and it didn't even take the edge off. It's miserable.Today had tons of those board planks over swamps, in various states of disrepair. And rebar climbs. So. many. rebar. climbs. And scary rebar descents too, where the rebar wasn't level.It's so exciting to be in Maine. I think we would have been overcome by the beauty at the top if a) we hadn't just come out of the gorgeous Whites and b) it wasn't so cold.We also came up on several strange turkey / chicken / dinosaur-looking birds. Grouse?We summitted five mountains today and set ourselves up for tomorrow: the dreaded Mahoosuc Notch! (Which AWOL describes  as "the most difficult or fun mile of the AT" and Guthook describes as "a deranged jumble of boulders.")I think I'll wear my pants tomorrow, as I expect to be on my hands and knees a lot. I enjoyed hiking to Hozier today. Got choked up on the song about insects and death ("In a Week") because it was so delicately beautiful and sad. And then I switched to my Prince Party playlist. Am I the first hiker to climb these mountains to Prince?So tonight, for the first time, I'm going to sleep in Maine. I made it!