Date: 2008-07-27
From: Northern Peaks Motel Gorham NH 

To: Northern Peaks Motel Gorham NH 
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: clear sky

Day 161 Sunday July 27 ¢ Northern Peaks Motel Gorham NH - Miles Today: 0 Total Miles: 1878.3We had a thunder and lightning storm overnight, but since we're in a motel, life is good from our standpoint. We're in Gorham still taking a zero day. We've had a nice relaxing day in the room watching a ton of HGTV and TLC TV and continuing to try to dry out and air our gear. We placed our really stinky items - our backpacks, socks and Brakeman¢s shoes - outside for maximum fresh air. Our raingear after drying in the room actually smells fine now. We headed back to Burger King for lunch to collect our free Whopper for completing the survey, which had a grand total of 3 questions. I think it was worth our time! In addition, we bought fries, a milkshake, and a Whopper Junior for Grasshopper. A good sized lunch for 2 for just $5. Throughout the day, we continued to snack on the goodies from the Wachovia team, making a good dent in the care package. We'll be hauling out a few extras tomorrow though, which is OK.After calling the Andover guesthouse and learning that all the private rooms were booked due to some activity in town, we changed our Andover plans. Instead of staying in Andover for 3 nights, we¢re going to hitch in, resupply, hitch out and continue hiking. Our original guidebook did not have a campsite listed near South Arm Road, but our other guidebook does have a campsite noted. With this new information, our plans are actually simplified. Our original plan had us doing a nero, a zero, and then hiking to South Arm and hitching back to Andover to spend another night.   With the news of this additional campsite, we can make three very doable hiking days and avoid staying in town.We're trying to keep an eye on our feet. The bottoms are a bit on the pinkish, red side. We¢re wondering if the issue is related to them being wet for 7 days. Hmmm? They're not cracking or peeling; they just have a little odd color. Hopefully, we will have some dry days ahead of us, although it looks like now they are calling for rain tomorrow. But we'll keep an eye on the feet and hopefully avoid foot rot (AKA trench foot).It¢s been a beautiful day here. The skies have recently turned gray, but no rain so far today. We¢ve noticed on our walks to Burger King these past 2 days that the town is just buzzing with athletic type people - bicyclists, hikers, and cars with campers and canoes and kayaks. One bicyclist was carrying a gallon of water in his hand as he biked through town. Apparently he was headed out for a long ride!   It's 5:30 and Brakeman has reported that he could just absolutely fall asleep. I think the packing of the over stuffed food bag has stressed him out and he hasn't even gotten around to packing the rest of his backpack yet. It might take him all night to figure that out. It sounds like we can have a leisurely departure tomorrow - not 5:00 or 6:00 a.m., but perhaps 8:00 a.m. We only have about 12 miles to hike, but it is always nice to just get up, secure a hitch, start hiking and get to camp early, especially when they're calling for afternoon rains. We figure we have about 8 or 9 more tough days of hiking before we get into some pretty easy terrain again ¢ relatively speaking. We just need to hang tough a little bit longer. Despite our rest days here, our knees are not totally healed. They especially remind us that they are in existence when we sit down, but hopefully they¢ll be back in good condition in the not too distant future. Goodnight from Gorham, soon to be Maine!