Date: 2007-08-04
From: Stratton

To: East Andover
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: clear sky

I've made it to Stratton, Maine; around mile 187. We're staying at a hostel tonight and drying out gear in the parking lot after one heck of a storm last night. After stealthing it on East Carry Pond, we headed up to Little Bigalow shelter, which was going to be taken over by about 40 camp kids (everything from French Canadian Girl Scouts to about 15 middle school boys). It obviously was not going to be a good idea to stay there, so we decided to attempt a push over the Bigalows; didn't happen. While climbing Little Bigalow, a huge storm blew in--tons of lightening, thunder and really nasty looking clouds all around us. We were able to get by with just a few sprinkles, and rolled into a campsite and set up our tents and hopped in them just as it started to rain. It poured, poured a bit more, and then broke for long enough to cook some dinner. I was able to cook dinner for the first time on the whole trip without burning anything...MSR recommends pumping the fuel bottle about twice as much as you really need to. I think some of this has to do with how small of a pot that I'm carrying. I should definitely have done more practice cooking with it before I left, but I'm good to go now, I think.We've been pretty isolated from the world lately. The old lady that gave us a ride into town said something about a bridge collapse in MN, which sucks. We saw someone have a close call last week...big storm and a pine tree blew over and landed just a few inches from his tent. He had curled up into the fetal position when he started to hear cracking noises, and ended up being a pretty lucky dude.According to the scale here at the hostel, I've lost another 4 pounds since I last weighed myself in Monson. I'm not sure how accurate it is, but either way, I'm definitely losing weight. I have run out of adjustment on the hip belt on my pack, which I was fit for at the store, which has kind of been a disapointment. I had come up with a list of things that I was going to send home when I got to town, but the post office was closed, and since tomorrow is Sunday, I'm just going to wait until the next town. I have been carrying way more food than I actually need, and am going to try to cut down some weight through better planning of food needs. I have started to carry more junk food, because it's kind of depressing to eat a huge serving of nasty Mac & Cheese and then not having anything to eat for dessert. I've found that Cranberry, Apple & Cherry Clif bars are really good, but they're hard to come by. I'm going to make myself a meal of mainly vegetables tonight just to try to get something other than Knorr's side dishes into my stomach From my rather copious time spent in the bathroom at Shaw's after eating all of those brats, I'm pretty sure that I should not be attempting to eat 5 brats at once any more. I did manage to polish off a whole pound of frozen corn when I got into Monson, which tasted good, since I hadn't had any sort of vegetable in more than a week! When I got to Caratunk, I at a whole pint of Ben & Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch in 12 minutes...with a plastic spoon! It was prettttttty tasty, but I'm pretty sure that I should not have eaten so much ice cream. I'm burning calories like crazy though, so I might as well eat like a pig while I can.It's been nasty hot here lately, in the 90s nearly every day, with really high humidity. Some guy that we came across today said that it's supposed to start running in the 70s for the next few days, which should be nice. It's really hard to hike long distances when it's so hot, and you realllly start to smell. The t-shirt that I wear every day is pretty rank, and so are the socks. I wear one pair of socks and boxers for the first half of the distance to the next town with laundry, and then switch at the midway point, so everything starts to get pretty ripe; especially me. It's really hard to bathe up here because the lots of the water is incredibly cold. At times, I know that I smell worse than some of the people who live in tents town by the river in Fredericksburg...that's pretty bad.Tomorrow it's time to climb Sugarloaf Mtn (backside of the ski resort), and then it's almost time for New Hampshire...should be interesting.