Date: 2009-08-14
From: Bemis Stream

To: Piazza Rock Lean-tp
Miles today: 15.7

Today was a day of laughs.First, to start the day of well, I slid off a rock while trying to maneuver through a crazy muddy section and my left foot landed in ankle deep mud (the caretaker at Piazza says the maintainers for this section live in Bar Harbor and haven't been around to fix up the trail in a long time - this whole section is a muddy MESS!). Mud about half an inch thick coated my shoe and sock and even managed to coat the inside of my shoe as well. It felt pretty gross as mud squished in my shoe with each step forward and luckily I was just 50 feet from Long Pond where I got cleaned up. I sumberged my entire foot with my sock and shoe still on into the pond - I would rather walk with a wet shoe and sock than a muddy one. Plus it was a gorgeous day and I knew they wouldn't take too long to dry. The whole ordeal gave me a good laugh.Later on in the day, as I was hiking along, I suddenly heard a guy yell out a long list of obscenities. This caught me off guard since all I had been hearing for the last hour or so was the birds chirping. My initial thought was that there was a crazy, angry, and unstable guy hiking close behind me, so I took off in a full on sprint up the trail to catch up to Plunger and Mr. Right. I finally caught up with them as they were eating lunch at the Little Swift River Pond Campsite, and as I started explaining why I was so out of breath, Pusher (who we had met in Manchester) rounded the corner completely covered in mud from head to toe. Apparently he slipped off a bog log and his entire body fell into the deep mud and that is when he let out the stream of swears I had heard. The whole situation was hilarious and he was glad to be heading into Rangelely just a few miles up the trail to get out of his muddy clothes and take a shower. A few hours later, I met up with Plunger and Mr. Right at the Route 4 road crossing, which is 9 miles from Rangeley. Mr. Right wasn't feeling well but Plunger was craving icecream from town, so the two of us hitched to the IGA in Rangeley. A school lunch lady picked us up and drove us in, we bought some snacks and icecream, then headed to the road to find a ride back to the trail. We eventually got a ride in the back of an old, rickety black pickup truck driven by a guy about our age with his girlfriend in the passenger seat. The ride in the back of the pickup was terrifyingly bumpy and we laughed so hard the entire way back to the trail at the ridiculousness of the situation that we almost lost control of our bladders. It's amazing what us hikers will do just for icecream! I am tenting tonight in a cozy little spot at Piazza Rock shelter. Looking forward to sleeping in a bit since we aren't planning on hiking too far tomorrow.OH - great news for steripen users! I have realized that batteries for my steripen have added up to be a major expense on my thru-hike. The device takes 2 CR123 camera batteries, which cost about $11 for both batteries and last about 20 days before needing new ones (which means I've spent close to $100 on batteries alone so far). Now while this may seem like a great expense, I found out some tidbits of info tonight that have helped me justify it. First, the caretaker said that her friend was doing some fieldwork in the middle of the desert somewhere and collected water from the only available water source one day - an animal feeding trough that contained nasty water and a dead, decaying animal. Her friend used steripen to treat the water and never got sick. Also, one of the guys in the shelter tonight knows someone who tested water before and after using steripen with some fancy machine - after using it, the water contained 0% bacteria DNA or RNA. 0% !! He also said that the UV rays emitted from the steripen go through the plastic, meaning that it is not necessary to dry the threads of the waterbottle before drinking from it - only the waterbottle cap needs to be wiped dry. I have been meticulously drying the threads of my waterbottles since Georgia (which I guess has been unnecessary!) but it would feel weird to stop that routine now, so I may just continue to do it for the next few weeks. Why not?