Date: 2012-08-29
To: Hiking along... 
Miles today: 0.0

Onwards with my mini vacation in the mountains...Chickadee and I started hiking south from Gorham and headed to wherever... Random Highlights of the trip so far:We were sitting at Lake of the Clouds having breakfast after a nice nights stay. As we were eating I saw another hiker who appeared familiar. I took a second glance and it was Miller Time!! He is an amazing guy, we met at Tom Lavardi's house in Mass. and then again at the Inn at Long Trail. He is a huge hiker and like me he hiked Aconcagua in Argentina. Miller Time left the trail in Hanover as he had to get home for family things. He just got back on the trail and we just so happened to run into eachother!!! Craziness! What a great reunion with a very cool guy!The winds were pretty decent on Mt Washington this time, although warm out the winds made it cold. I was able to throw my hiking pole away from me and the wind would push it back. Fun game to play while hiking! Chickadee then blew bubbles on top of the ridge as we hiked, fun stuff. Some day hikers came by as we were jamming out to music, blowing bubbles, and throwing our trekking poles... they just laughed.. we are cool like that!As you know we can do work for stay at huts. The downfall is we have to wait for everyone to finish eating before we can get any left overs. We kinda look like hungry dogs, drooling and making strange sounds as we watch people eat. Our solution... A crazy game of Uno! Cheeze It, Chickadee, and I enjoyed a long drawn out game that passed the time well. The game thankfully ended as food was available.We made it down to crawford notch and decided that I needed to go get my sleeping bag... foolish move on my part I figured since it was eighty degrees out daily I only needed my liner... I did not consider at 5000ft what it would be, COLD! I had barely slept the last three days, so it was time to act. We hitched 25 miles south to Franconia Notch where my sleeping bag was waiting. This brought us to the Flume Visitor Center where we met Sue. More on her later! We took a tour of the Flume, it is a pretty waterfall - as we know I am a sucker for those. Our night was spent at Chet's the other night, what a great place to stay.   Chet is an incredible person with a amazing story to be heard. It was fun meeting him and getting his "Quiz" to see if we were real thru hikers or not. The Franconia Ridge was so beautiful, clear blue skies with next to no wind. We enjoyed the hike and took time to just sit and stare at the view. I stood out on a perch as you can see in my previous post, what a great place to be! We ended up spending the night camping ontop of Garfield Mtn in a stone box where we pitched our tent in. We enjoyed a warm drink and sat watching the sunset, breathtaking to watch the sun drop down below the horizon. At 0530 we woke up and dragged our sleeping bags out to watch the sunrise, even better. The sky filled with a full spectrum of colors as the sun emerged above the mountains. The silhouette of the mountains in front made for an incredible view. A picture could never do it justice.Hitchhiking... ha! Once at the crawford notch again we had completed the gap we skipped to go get my sleeping bag. We had to now hitch back down the franconia. Sue who I mentioned earlier was a trail angel. She offered us a place to stay and we were headed back down to meet her again and enjoy a nice nights stay. Sounds easy, it was the first time. Without much time passing we got a car to stop, a couple from Germany. They brought us part way, the next couple was from Quebec. Normal so far.... and then things got funny... a lady who was 68 years old came and said hi. She had a errand to run 10 minutes up the road but said she could drive us the last 16 miles after. We jumped in. We ended up going on a two plus hour ride to who knows where! She was a very interesting lady. We ended up going to the lancaster fairgrounds and dropping off political campaign stuff... aka.. we were hikernapped! Thankfully we made it to Sue's house soon after, wow. More to come!