morvasaaty/AppalachianTrail-LD-Hikers-Blogs-and-Weather-20-years huggingface dataset:
Date: 2009-06-27
From: East Rainbow Lake

To: Wadleigh Stream Lean-to
Miles today: 15.3
Weather: overcast clouds

Today we got going around 7:15amWe did big miles today, our longest day ever!Mud, Mud and river crossings, our feet are waterlogged from bogs and being wet the whole time. Our equipment damp and our boots muddy. It is one of the wettest Junes that Maine has ever experienced, having rained for 21 days straight before. Woohoo, we get to part of Maine¢s history. We made it to the Wadleigh stream Lean-to and are camping outside the shelter. Tomorrow we have 7ish miles till we take the mile long path to White House Landing where we can shower, eat real food, and spend a night indoors. Then back through the wilderness for 7 more days.I'm proud of us, we are going well, and working well as a team. We have this shelter to ourselves and have made use of the clothes line to hang our wet clothes from the day before. Some lessons from the trail:1) Walking is an art and a meditation: see what's in front of you.2) Most of our tripping was when we were trying to do two things at the same time.3) Switch off: sometimes it helps to lead and sometimes it helps to follow.4) Take your wet socks and shoes off when you can to wring them out, our feet are prunes!!5) Love each other.-JoshuaDay 5- Slogged through knee-deep mud today. Broke camp in the rain after sleeping in a leaky tent (a extraordinarily miserable experience), walked through the rain, fell into the puddles. I had to pee for hours but didn¢t because the mosquitoes swarm your butt and it¢s raining really hard (rain doesn¢t keep them away) anyway. Everything gets wet and bitten if you pull your pants down. Moral low. Misery. I want to skip this god-awful section or just go home. The only thing that keeps me going is that it would just be silly to quite a trip you planned for a year on the fifth day. We walked 15 miles through the mud and puddles. Sometimes the trail is just one big river. I hate my life. Mud- knee deep. Rain- yes, all day. Bug bites- about 30 per leg and lots everywhere else (I had to pee sometime!)-Anya
Date: 2009-06-28
From: Wadleigh Stream Lean-to

To: White House Landing
Miles today: 7.0

Day 6- To White House Landing! Today we walked a bit over 7 miles to pay in extraordinary amount of money for a real meal and a roof. We get off the AT onto a blue-blazed side trail and slog through, you guessed it¢more mud¢to a lakeside. There we blow the famous foghorn and wait for the motorboat to pick us up. Bill comes for us and shuttles us across the lake White House Landing Wilderness Camp. Bill and Linda are great. They run this little no-electricity operation in the middle of the 100 Miles Wilderness. At the start of the trip we were contemplating spending the night because of the extremely high prices, thinking we¢d just stop in for lunch, but after this rain we are more than happy to ditch $80 just to sleep in a bunkhouse on our nasty sleeping bags and use an outhouse (it¢s a hole in the ground, there is no toilet, welcome to the AT). There is no laundry but we wash our stinking clothes in the lake without soap and hope for the best. They don¢t dry by the next morning because the air is so saturated with water. We shower! Bill and Linda are great and cook really well. Linda can probably tell I¢m miserable because she tries to cheer me up by saying that the sun is forecasted to come out in¢¦ 6 days.We meet two north-bounders: Wally and Packman, two Brits. They¢re almost done and I watch in amazement as they each methodically put down a 1 lb burger, a mountain or fries, and then split a large pepperoni pizza. They¢re friendly fellows but don¢t say a word until they finish they¢re food. One day, in Georgia or southern NC (I hope we get there!), I too will walk a 26 mile day and then eat 7,000 calories of food.Bill says he would never thru-hike. He says (his words) that he isn¢t into ¢prolonged misery.¢ We go to bed warm in our dirty bags. I don¢t begrudge them this money. They keep this camp running in the middle of nowhere and have to shuttle in supplies from Bangor, 100 miles away.Mud-thigh-deep. Rain- yes, all day again. Bites- Still about 50ish. Blisters- 2 Foot sores- 2PS- At one point today the trail turned straight into a lake. We thought we were lost but we weren¢t. The trail was just 4 feet under water.Anya
Date: 2009-06-29
From: White House Landing

To: Cooper Brook Lean-to
Miles today: 11.7

Day 7- After a huge breakfast we continued to mud-land. We walked to Cooper Brook Lean-to. The walk is not strenuous but I'm worried about my feet. Blisters and sores are starting to form where the wet socks rub relentlessly. It rains, of course. The bugs are worse than they've been the entire time. Clouds of mosquitoes. I can't stop to pee again. They swarm you regardless of the 100% Deet that we've been applying. I'm afraid I'm going to get cancer from this stuff (the bottle has warning labels) and it will have been all for nothing as I am being eaten alive anyway.We walk for miles through lowland bogs, trying to balance on the pathetic excuses for bridges (sometimes just logs floating unhinged in huge puddles) while swatting mosquitoes. A day ago I found a small stream of caked blood behind my left ear where a black fly had bitten me. Now the bite itches something awful. I reach behind to scratch it, use my other hand to smack a mosquito on my forehead and WHOOPS... there I go. I lose my balance, slip off the bog log-bridge, and sink knee-deep into mud and moss. I can't pull my leg out until a minute later when I finally grab onto a nearby tree and haul myself out. The bugs take this opportunity of no-swatting hands to attack me full-force. There are also fat yellow slugs everywhere. I find them in my shoes and on my tent every morning. Sometimes I grab a tree for balance and squash one on my palm.I hate the 100 Miles Wilderness.Mud-everywhere. Rain- yes. Bug bites- too many to speak of. Blisters- 5. Sores- 2.-Anya
Date: 2009-06-30
From: Cooper Brook Lean-to

To: Logan Brook Lean-to
Miles today: 11.7
Weather: broken clouds

Day 8- Feet still hurt in the morning. Nothing holds on to protect the blisters and sores. Not band aids, not moleskin, not new-skin. It's raining. I thought the mud was all a bad dream but it's still there when I wake up. This morning I slipped on a rock and fell face first into it. My pack was heavy from a resupply (Thanks Kathy!) so I couldn't get up right away. I flailed around like a wounded animal for a whole minute before I managed to get on my feet. My hair and shoulder are black and caked with mud. I skinned my entire left shin and it swells up for days to come. I hate the 100 Mile Wilderness.Josh's ankles are bothering him so he's walking at a snail's pace. We saw a family day-hiking and I wondered why in heaven they were out here in the rain and mud. We ford the East Branch of the Penobscot and the water roars and swirls around us, waist deep. The next shelter's log book has many an entry about lost and broken hiking poles from this river. We're lucky to get out unscathed and hey, it even washed our boots, muddy legs, shorts, and underwear! Out here your take any washing you can get, even if it's fording a crazy river. Haven't these people ever heard of bridges?By the end of the day my feet hurt worse than ever. They hurt so bad I'm yelling back to Josh, "I'm getting out on the next road we see." Behold, we cross a dingy little logging road a few hours later. It's only two miles (up a mountain!) to our night's destination so we decide to see how my feet feel in the morning. I take off my shoes and about 5 spots on each foot are missing big swathes of skin, which is just peeling off due to the wet. Plus, the blisters.Mud- awful. Rain- some. Feet- look like someone took a baseball bat to them.-Anya
Date: 2009-07-01
From: Logan Brook Lean-to

To: Shaw's Lodging, Monson, Maine
Miles today: 0.0

Day 9- This morning we saw our first patch of blue sky since entering Maine since starting the Wilderness. We woke up and started walking in the wrong direction. Why, you ask? I can't take it anymore. We limped 2 miles back down Whitecap Mountain to the logging road we passed yesterday evening. We heard that there might be logging traffic this morning. We get down to the road and there is nothing. We start walking toward what we think (heard) is a ranger's station. The mosquitoes are vicious. All the sudden, rumbling. Truck! A monster logging truck with a full load of felled trees appears. I jump into the road and start waving my hiking poles like a mad-woman. Probably not the best idea since the truck is bigger than my house and I am.... not. However, it stops rather than running me into a pancake. We ask how far to the ranger's station. 22 miles?! Can we PLEASE get a ride? Hallelujah! Thank you, thank you, thank you.I climb the 4 steps into the cab and don't bother to put my seatbelt on. If we hit anything in this truck it will lose, it will be just another mud puddle in this forsaken mud-hole. We say we are trying to get to Monson and he takes us as far as Dover where the lumberyard sits ready to receive the load. So we find ourselves in a lumberyard in the middle of Nowhere, Maine. We hitch a ride into the middle of Dover, another one-street town and eat lunch at the Bear's Den Cafe. Sue from Shaw's Lodging comes to fetch us. Our savior!We love Sue and Dawn instantly. We love Shaw's. We can shower, nap in a real bed with real sheets, wash our filthy clothes, put our boots on a marvelous invention-- the boot dryer-- and watch Harry Potter with a group of about 6 other south-bounders. They've made it through the whole Wilderness. We meet Jo (finally!) and Phil, Dave, Steve, Joe and others. They've all walked through the mud. They understand. We sit, talk, some drink beer, and commiserate-- the flooded trails, the bugs, the insane river crossings.Dawn helps me set up a foot bath for my aching feet. Bubbling water and Epson salt-- good for the soul, good for the sores. My feet and legs begin to heal with Neosporin and dry socks. Tonight we eat at the best and only restaurant in town, the Lakeshore House. We stay up way past our hiker bedtimes (8:30 when the sun goes down) talking and laughing with more friends: Andrew and Collin. Andrew shared a shuttle with us to Baxter and Collin and his dad we met going up Katahdin while Josh and I descended. I'm so happy to see they're alive, we wondered for several days after if they made it down with their lives and limbs intact. Collin said we had the "fear of God" in our eyes when we met coming down the mountain. Andrew, who has come all the way from Australia, says he's "giving it the ass" as they apparently say down under. He's had enough of this Appalachian Trail business, this mud, these bugs, and this rain. He's using the rest of his visa time to travel the US by vehicle not by foot and sleep in dry places. Tomorrow we rest, then we trudge on.-Anya
Date: 2009-07-02
From: Shaws Lodging, Moson, Maine

To: Shaws Lodging, Monson, Maine
Miles today: 0.0

Anya and I have about 40 miles left to go in the 100 Mile wilderness. We had been hiking wet for 5 days and our feet were not doing well so we got off the trail via a logging road hitching a ride with a giant logging truck and then getting picked up to recoup at Shaw¢s Lodging in Monson. We are doing well and are feeling better and have fixed our supplies.We start back into the 100 Miles tomorrow where we left off at White Cap Mountain to finish the miles we missed. Will update more when we get back out of the wilderness.-JoshuaDay 10- We sleep in way past our hiker wake up call (the sun comes up at 5AM) till 7:30. The famous Shaw's all you can eat breakfast does not disappoint. My hiker appetite makes its first appearance (early by thru-hiking standards, but then again, you all know I like to eat). I put down 2 eggs, a pile of potatoes, 6 pancakes, plus orange juice and coffee. I am not stuffed, just pleasantly full. And my pants are getting looser. I call this the "Eat everything in sight, walk all day up a mountain with a backpack diet." Believe me ladies, it works. The day is spent hanging out with our new friends, eating more, not wearing boots, and not walking anywhere. Life is good again.-Anya
Date: 2009-07-03
From: Logan Brook Lean-to

To: Shaws Lodging, Monson, Maine
Miles today: 43.2

Dates- 7/3/09 to 7/6/09Back to the 100 Miles Mud Puddle. Buddy, a Monson local who runs a shuttle service, took us to the road where on that fateful day (2 days ago!) I waved down an 18-wheeler logging truck. The mosquitoes were as bad as I remembered them a few days back. The mud was still there. It was raining. What else is new...?BUT my feet felt much better and behold, my socks were dry. We climbed White Cap Mountain to the top that day and continued to Carl Newhall Shelter, calling it a day early after only 7 mud-filled miles. There we met Ron and Kim, a couple from just north of the ATL, and Anja (just like me, just with a "j"), Dawn, and Kim-- Mainers out to hike the 280ish miles of AT in their home state. We would hike with all five of them for the next week, leapfrogging ahead or staying behind only to meet up with them at the same campsite for dinner and sleep. (Anja, Kim, and Dawn are currently a day ahead of us, Ron and Kim just shared their pint of Ben and Jerry's and headed to bed here in Stratton.) The 100 Miles Mud Puddle as I now lovingly refer to it was just that. However, the last two days...behold... the sun came out. To further add to our luck, we were at higher elevations so the buggeroos weren't nearly as bad-- maybe just a few landing on you at any one time rather than 20. And so, I hate to say this, I enjoyed a few miles of the Wilderness. Finally, we saw some lakes, some mountain views, some blue sky. The last night we camped 10 miles from Highway 15 (into Monson) and hiked past the other bookend ¢warning, you are entering the 100 Miles Wilderness, no one will save you¢ sign just before dinnertime. Josh and I took two pictures at it: one ecstatic and one miserable and tired to accurately portray our emotions coming out of that mud hole. Although sore, my feet held up the last few days. In Monson we had learned from a Northbounder, Ace, the golden ticket to open, festering-sore-free feet in wet, wet conditions: Vaseline. Every morning I dutifully slathered a handful all over my feet and slid them into my socks. I could feel the same 5 spots rubbing on each foot as before, except this time the sock slid over the skin rather than rubbing into it, allowing the sores to finally heal.Hallelujah!-Anya
Date: 2009-07-07
From: Shaws Lodging, Monson, Maine

To: Shaws Lodging, Monson, Maine
Miles today: 0.0

We're becoming semi-permanent residents here at Shaw's. What can I say, we love the place. The food, the companionship, the not hiking... it's all amazing. We took another zero day, our fourth technically. It's a lot of time off from the trail, more than most people take right at the beginning. I hear that Southbounders take a lot more zeros at first than Northbounders due to the difficulty of the trail in Maine. I'm happy to sit on my butt and eat again, that's all I can say. It's been raining all day but guess what, I'm INSIDE. Hah, rain, take that.Ron and Kim stayed the night here with us, and Anja, Dawn, and Kim pulled in just after breakfast, having over-nighted at the last shelter in the Wilderness to avoid having to pay for two nights in a hostel (wise women).We have been hearing about the Piscataquis River for a week now. It's really big, basically. Because of all the rain here for the last 21 days straight, the usually knee-high ford is now shoulder high. Everyone we meet in Monson tells us in an ominous voice not to go, so we decided to take the high and dry road-- an 11 miles gravel road bypass. It means missing 6 miles of the AT but knowing for sure that we won't be swept downstream and get injured and/or die. Ron, Kim, and the ladies are all taking the road as well. None of us want to die, as it turns out.We had also met several people that had fallen in the waist-high rivers we already forded in the Wilderness. One got swept downstream and got out shivering, soaked to the bone, and bruised...but okay. Another lost everything. His pack, his wallet (which was in his pack), everything. Ron met him at the General Store and invited him out to dinner with us. The poor guy has NOTHING and the other lodge in town found him some clean, dry clothes and is letting him do work-for-stay until he can get on his feet. The General Store owner bought him food. Gotta love small towns.The point is we want to keep our wallets, gear, and limbs so we're going around.-AnyaPS- I ENJOY when it rains while I'm in town. I know it'll just make the trail more muddy for me the next day but it's so sublimely satisfying to sit on a couch and shake my fist at the window saying TAKE THAT RAIN, you can't get me HERE.
Date: 2009-07-08
From: Maine Highway 15

To: Moxie Bald Lean-to
Miles today: 17.9
Weather: light rain

Did you guess it rained? CORRECT. It rained allllll day. Our trip miles counter says we went 17.9 miles but we really weren't that brave. We skipped those 6 miles over the crazed Piscataquis (West and East Branches) and by hitched with a nice Monson local who picked us (myself, Josh, Ron, and Kim) up by the side of the gravel road we took to get around the ford. We must have looked like wet, wilted flowers because the guy drove by us down the road, turned around, and came back to ask us where we were going. All day the trail was flooded. I wish I can taken a picture because you just have to see it to believe it. We were literally walking through ankle to knee deep water for five or six miles. I slipped and fell again (again!?). I find it better, however, to face first in water than mud as it is so much easier to get off. During a snack break Ron said, "the AT is the only trail you can probably go trout fishing in." That about sums up the experience.Tonight we camped by a beautiful lake. I was washing my legs off on a rock shelf that goes straight down into the water, enjoying myself, until Josh spotted an 8-inch long leach chillin' on the rock a foot from my feet. He says, "hey that's a weird piece of sea-weed." I was like "oh, let me look at that... AHHHHH." I must have jumped three feet into the air and onto dry shore. IT was gross, folks. It was huge and black with gray spots, and thin like a flounder. It looked at us (I think) like "I'll get you next time my pretties" and half slithered, half swam away. It gives me the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it.Tomorrow we tackle Moxie Bald Mountain. We heard in Monson that the next few days will be sunny. I¢m crossing my fingers.-Anya
Date: 2009-07-09
From: Moxie Bald Lean-to

To: Pleasant Pond Lean-to
Miles today: 13.1
Weather: scattered clouds

Today was long and tiring. The sun did come out and we had an amazing view from Moxie Bald Mountain, which wasn't actually as bad as the elevation profile looked. Ron, Kim, Josh, Kim, and I relaxed on the top and took a few pictures then moved on. Pleasant Pond Mountain, the next "hill," was not pleasant. The 4 miles up and down and up and down and over about 5 false summits killed the final view from the top. The view was indeed spectacular but we were so tired and angry that this mountain kept going that we weren't that impressed. We did glimpse a view of the Bigelows in the distance, our next big challenge.Once we got to the shelter I just wanted to sit. Not eat, not change into dryer clothes, just sit. Tomorrow Josh and I have to high tail the last 5 miles to the US 201 trailhead by 9 am. Ron and Kim aren't staying in Caratuck, this next town, but we have to drop in since I already asked my mom to send a mail drop of food there. So it's stay in this Northern Outdoors Lodge, shower, wash clothes, and get food, or be dirty, stinky, and starving for three days.... it was a very difficult decision. The reason we have to be there at 9 am is that they have a free shuttle that will pick you up at the trailhead and take you to the lodge, but it only runs at 9 am and 4 pm. Otherwise, you have to walk 2 extra miles to the lodge and as thru-hikers, who have 2,165 miles to walk, there is no way in hell you want to walk another 2 miles to anything, be it beer or shower, good weather or no.-Anya
Date: 2009-07-10
From: Pleasant Pond Lean-to

To: Northern Outdoors Lodge, Caratuck
Miles today: 5.7
Weather: scattered clouds

This morning we woke up at 5 am, the butt-crack of dawn. It was cold outside but we forced outselve up and out to get to the trailhead. Well, we actually left at 6:30 am because we stink at getting out of camp in a quick, organized fashion. The almost six miles out were muddy but flat so we moved quicker than I think we've moved thus far on the trail.The Northern Outdoors Lodge was a success. We rented a cabin-tent. (We weren't sure what the heck that was before we saw it but it's just what it sounds like. It's a tent, but it's a cabin. It's a cabin-tent, use your imagination.) The Lodge is hiker-friendly but not hiker-oriented. It really caters to the rafting, ATVing, snowmobiling crowd that come in from all over New England. These people come in cars, shower every day, enjoy fresh clothes everything, and thus more or less live in the lap of luxury compared to our stinky selves. Their finger nails are even clean! It's crazy.After we showered and put on relatively clean clothes I felt like we fit in a little bit more. I sat and updated this journal for the 100 Miles Wilderness (couldn't do it in Monson, library was closed) while Josh got me a Bloody Mary from the bar. He looked at me sipping a drink and sitting in front of a computer and said "yea, hard life on the Appalachian Trail." This evening we met four guys from Boston: Greg, Mike, Mark, and Scott. While Josh was inside, I struck up a conversation with them over my trail-battered legs. I was basically sitting on the deck among these unbitten vacationers scratching my legs to a bloody mess (no joke) because they were so covered in bug bites I literally could not prevent my nails from digging into them. They just looked at me like I was crazy. They said hello, I said hello. Ten minutes later they're buying Josh and I drinks and treating us like minor celebrities just because we're dumb enough to walk to Georgia from Maine. It took them a few beers to wrap their minds around that, and Josh and I a few drinks as well to realize that OH MY GOD, we ARE walking from Maine to Georgia, are we out of our minds?Several rounds of drinks and some amazing nachos later, we¢re all in the hot tub and Josh is declaring ¢these the absolutely, positively the coolest guys I¢ve met ever.¢ We had a good night. Once word got out that some two weirdoes were trying to walk all the way to Georgia everyone wanted to know how and why. I was sadly forced to declined yet another drink as I didn¢t want to face the trail tomorrow with a hang over and retired to bed at the ungodly late hour of 10 pm. We haven¢t gone to bed that late since the night we stayed up in Monson with Collin and Andrew a week earlier, but the night spent as hiker royalty in a hot tub with free drinks and good company was definitely worth it.-Anya