Date: 2008-06-09
From: Shaker Campsite MA 

To: October Mountain Lean-to MA
Miles today: 18.7
Weather: scattered clouds

Day 113 ¢ Monday June 9 ¢ October Mountain Lean-to MA ¢ Miles Today: 18.7 Total Miles: 1544.8Expecting another 90+ degree day, we figured we'd get a really, really early start to beat the heat. Good game plan, huh? Hmm, not so much. We had the alarm set for 5:00 but the agreement was that if we woke up earlier, we'd go ahead and get rolling. Grasshopper opened her eyes at 4:37, looked over at Brakeman and he was wide awake and ready to go. As soon as he saw Grasshopper open her eyes, he sat up and started stretching his feet.   Grasshopper got no time to wake up ¢ it was time to hit the trail! Off to the races we went. We were on the trail by 5:15! The morning was very humid and we were sweating within an hour, but the worst part was that the Massachusetts State Bird's feeding time was 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. Nobody told us that. The state bird is the mosquito, of course. We had thousands of them. We ran down the trail - almost literally, for about 3 hours. We made good time but it was horribly rough on the feet and legs. For the first 3 - 4 hours this morning, we were spraying ourselves with DEET, the high potent stuff, but apparently we were sweating so bad that it was ineffective as the mosquitoes just attacked us. On Grasshopper's one knee we counted 7 mosquito bites. We are thankful that there are no little children here with magic markers who want to play connect the dots, because boy would they have a field day on our bodies. In addition to the mosquitoes, Grasshopper has heat rash all over her thighs and her lower legs. It's a good thing the Vogue Japan fashion shoot was a week ago because we would not be in the running this week for it. We are not a pretty sight! Boy were we excited when at 9:00 we crossed a little bridge over a pond, and realized that we had just left the mosquito infested area! We took a snack bar break and enjoyed the comforts of not getting eaten alive. There were basically no more mosquitoes for the rest of the day! Well, at least compared to what we had been in. This morning¢s horrible mosquitoes panicked us a bit. Holy cow, if this is what the remaining 7 weeks of our hike are going to be like, we are doomed. We were so thankful that the mosquito battle ended at 9:00 this morning. We lost that battle but I think we're still winning the war.While we were taking a breakfast break at one of the roads, we asked a 50-year old runner out for a morning run when the 90-degree temps would break.   He stopped and chatted with us. Once we told him what we were up to, the conversation went like this:Runner: Hey, you've now entered the great part of the trip. You're now in civilization and out of the redneck area. You¢re about to enter the Berkshire area, which is a high-end second home community. Where are you from?Us:   We¢re rednecks from North Carolina. Well, actually that is what we wished we said. But somehow the cat got our tongue and we missed that opportunity to have him do an open mouth, insert foot. It was really rather snobbish of him to say that now we've entered civilization and we're out of the redneck country. But we're in the Berkshires so we¢re not sure what else we should expect. Top drawer!Turns out for the past 30 years, he's been self- employed in the lawn mowing - landscaping business. And, of course, with the gas prices being up to $4.00, his business is getting hit hard. I think he said his monthly gasoline bill, which used to be $600, is now $1400 - $2000 and there's no way he can make up that difference in expenses with charging more.The one advantage of the horrible mosquitoes was that we made really good time this morning. We hiked 10 miles by 10:00, so we took a nice lunch break at Upper Goose Pond, sitting at the pond¢s edge, taking in the views and the lapping noise of the waves hitting the shoreline. The pond was beautiful. It looked more like a small lake than a pond. We were prematurely chased away for our sitting spot, as there were three canoes that needed to beach their boats at our spot to swap out boaters and hikers. After Upper Goose Pond, we crossed over I-90 with the famous Berkshires sign off to the side.A couple miles up the trail was another pond - Finerty Pond, which I think surely must be Italian for Fly Pond. We thought we¢d take a break at Finerty Pond and enjoy a Snickers bar, but within seconds of sitting down, Grasshopper counted 21 BIG flies on her legs and more were arriving! So we quickly ate our Snickers and buzzed on. Wow ¢ never have seen that many flies in one place! We regretted not getting a picture!We arrived at October Mountain Shelter about 3:30, hot, sweaty and dirty. We had been drinking a lot of water all day so we were in pretty good shape fluid wise, but we had no problem downing our bag of gorp in about a minute. We then headed to the stream to do washing - our shirts, underwear, socks and our entire body. It was a pretty hot and humid day and we needed a dunking. It's 6:30 and 85 degrees inside our tent. We're hiding in our tent because there are too many flies, biting flies and mosquitoes here at camp. For dinner, we actually put on our long pants to add another layer of protection from the biting bugs. It doesn¢t seem quite as humid this evening and it appears that we may escape the evening thunderstorms. But who knows?Tomorrow the trail takes us through Dalton, where we'll do a quick resupply and perhaps hit a restaurant before continuing on to camp. It's another 16+ mile day and I think it's still supposed to be warm and perhaps rain. Goodnight from Massachusetts where the state bird, the mosquito, seems to be ready to chase us all the way to Katahdin.