Date: 2006-08-20
From: Stony Brook Shelter

To: Wintturi Shelter
Miles today: 9.9

Today we passed the 1700 mile mark.The word for today is wet. The rain continued last night off and on. It rained hard in the early morning around 6am just when I was getting ready (I almost wrote "fixin' to" -- picking up some E. TN from Veto) to answer the call of nature. Fortunately, it let up by 7am before things got too urgent.By mutual agreement we all slept in, and didn't hit the trail until 8:45am, very late for us. By then the rain had stopped, but the whole woods was sopping wet, and every slight breeze shook rain from the leaves. It was hard to tell whether it was raining or not.When we started out our hike, we were in a cloud. We had great views of the inside of clouds from all the viewpoints during the hike. We had to hike slowly, as the roots and rocks were slippery underfoot. If you happen to set your heel down on a root facing downhill, you'd skid and likely wind up seated on the trail on your backside. Add in some 2000' of ascents that didn't look like much on the map profile, and we had a pretty tough day, even though it ended at 2:45pm at the shelter.We took a standup break for snacks at a roadside at about 11am, since there was nowhere dry to sit. We'd met 5 SOBO's who had all stayed at the lookout, a cabin on private land whose owners allowed its use as a shelter, about 3 miles short of our destination. We decided to stop there for lunch and reached it about 12:30pm. It's a nice cabin of post & beam construction, but needs a new roof and some tlc. It sits where there was formerly a firetower.It seemed to be clearing off, but as we headed off on the last 3 miles of the hike, there was a steady drizzle that ended as we arrived at the shelter. As of 7pm the FDOM are the only ones here, though someone could still pull in.This is a nice shelter with a good water source. I used the time from the early stop to sponge bathe during the extended break in the rain. It feels so good to be clean and in my dry town clothes. Everyone's hiking clothes are hanging on a line above us in the shelter, where hopefully they'll dry to slightly damp, as they have to go on again tomorrow.At 5pm I tuned in to the local NPR station, NH public radio, for the weather, learning that thunderstorms were predicted overnight and a sunny day is up for tomorrow. Sure enough as I was cooking dinner thunder could be heard, and by the time I was eating, it had gotten close. A hard shower followed and is just now ending. The storm front seems to have ushered in dryer air.Tomorrow we have longer miles scheduled with a resupply trip to a country store. That will carry us through to Tuesday, when we meet up with Carol in Hanover. I haven't seen her in over a month, the longest separation since we married 36 years ago. I'm glad she'll be coming then, and has agreed to slack us for the 4 days until my daughter, her husband, and grandson arrive on Saturday. After that it will be another 5 weeks until we summit Katahdin, around Oct. 1, until I see her again. For the other FDOMs, it's been even longer since they've seen their wives. Veto often talks about how he misses his "Bugs".The rain is tapering off now at 7:30pm. It's getting chilly so I'm calling it a day.Onward to Maine!