Date: 2007-08-21
From: Monson, ME - Shaw's Lodging

To: Monson, ME - Shaw's Lodging
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

Well I am at the last trail town, Monson, ME. I arrived yesterday and am taking a zero today. The post office can't find my food box which also has my last set of maps. I have to go check again at 10:00.I found a pair of Levi's 505 blue jeans someone left at the Horseshoe Canyon Lean-to yesterday. Size W32 L30. I was wearing size W36 L30 before the hike. I tried them on and they fit a little loose! I stuffed them in my pack and am wearing them around town today. My first time out of nylon and polyester in 5 months.I will head into the 100 mile wilderness and then up Mt Katahdin in the last 115 mile section of the trail. I still don't have internet service on my phone and don't even have cell phone service at this point. This will probably be my last entry until I complete the hike and get back to some place I can upload my journal entries and pictures. I am feeling better after having trail town stops every couple days for a while. Now I have to do about an 8 day stretch to finish up. I am excited to be completing the journey. It has been wonderful, but it has made me weary with time. The rest of the story:I was taking a zero today, but I was awake at 5:30 AM and couldn't get back to sleep. I went down stairs. Hangman and Castaway were eating poptarts and cookies. They were getting a shuttle to the trail at 6:30.At 7:00 breakfast was ready. I joined Blue, Squeeks, and John Knee Mud in the kitchen. The same lady who made my pizza at the mini mart was here to cook breakfast at Shaw's. They ask you how many eggs you want and how you want them cooked. I said three and a few minutes later I got a plate with 3 scrambled eggs, 3 strips of bacon, 3 sausage links, 3 pieces of french toast, and potatoes. You can get seconds too.After breakfast I went to the post office to get my food box with JKM. They didn't have my box and only one of JKM's. They told us to come back at 10:00. We went across the street to town hall at 8:00 and the lady working there let us into the library an hour before regular opening time. I updated my trail journal and read through the guest book entries. At 10 we went back to the post office they didn't have my box, but they had one for JKM. They brought it out and it didn't have a name or address on for the ship to or return address. Apparently the label had come off. It had a post mark from Lincoln, NH and said to hold for thru-hiker with an ETA of Aug 20th. Someone had figured out that from the post mark date at Lincoln a thru-hiker should be near Monson by Aug 20th and sent the box there. Meanwhile my box with computer printed label prepared 5 months ago is no where to be found. I will try again tomorrow.I got a pint of ice cream and a soda on the way back to Shaw's. I watched TV and tried to solve a level 3 Sudoku puzzle in the paper that JKM had started. I spent half the day working on that and never solved it. At one time 357 Magnum and JKM copied the puzzle and we were all trying to solve it. None of us were able to solve it.Raincheck arrived at Shaw's. He is a nobo hiker raising money for an organization that works to prevent diseases in Africa.At 6:30 PM all the hiker's in town gathered at the Lake Shore House Pub for dinner and what turned out to be my birthday party. There were 10 of us there: me, JKM, 357 Magnum, Batman, Raincheck, Rockman, Rodeo Clown, Trashbag, Ben, and Amanda. They sang happy birthday to me, bought me dinner including desserts with birthday candles ( fortunately only 3 instead of 43), JKM sang Danny Boy. It was a lot of fun. We had the waitress, who is also the librarian, take pictures of us with a half dozen of our cameras and later she came back to take a picture for the pub. It was a great way to spend our last evening in a trail town. Tomorrow we all head into the 100 mile wilderness, except 357 who will be going to see some friends and wait for his daughter to come hike the rest of the trail.