Date: 2016-07-23
From: Thunderhill Road

To: Woodstock Stage Road
Miles today: 20.0
Weather: scattered clouds

After the best breakfast ever (amazing oatmeal with peanut butter, banana, fresh blueberries, and raisins), we got back to the trail. Verge and I were not feeling extremely motivated, and it was quite hot out. Out of nowhere, it started to rain on us. It felt like a passing rain, so we just took cover under a tree while waiting for our aqua mira to be ready to put into our water. The rain did pass, but for the next couple hours we had scattered showers and a little bit of thunder rumbles. I made up a little song while hiking today, which was fun. It definitely helped pass the time. Later, I ran into Mountain Goat and Peach! They decided to end their day early and set up their tents before the coming storm. I didn't know there was a storm coming; I thought it would just continue to be harmless thunder rumblings and scattered showers...boy, was I wrong.Verge and I got to the top of the hill, and all of a sudden the sky got incredibly dark. Scary dark. The wind forcefully came at us out of nowhere. It was intense, and frankly, I was pretty terrified. The trees were swaying, and based on all the branches that littered the ground already, it was a pretty high likelihood that more would fall soon. Well, the coming storm definitely kicked us into high gear, but then the rain came. It started pouring so hard, I could barely see! It was even hurting my skin! That's when I realized it was hailing! It had gone from 90 degrees and sunny to HAILING and cold! Oh, New England...The storm was downright scary! We debated taking cover in a shelter we were passing that was 0.1 off the trail, but we decided maybe it would be safer to just continue down the mountain and get to lower elevation. Safer from the hail, maybe, but because we were going downhill on the trail, which had turned into a muddy stream, I fell and scraped up my whole leg. Oops. Ow! I was now covered in mud, scratched up, and getting beaten by rain and hail, but Verge and I decided to belt out, "If you like pina coladas and getting caught in the rain!" etc. We came across one other hiker going southbound who asked us if we had angered the gods. The storm passed, and we still had quite a few more miles to go. We met a southbounder named Handmaid (all of his gear was made out of things he had lying around the house--pretty cool! The last two miles of the day were the worst. Because my shorts were wet and muddy from the rain and from falling, my inner thighs started chafing really badly. It got worse and worse, until it got to the point where it felt like I was on fire! We blasted up a steep hill where there were cows and a sunset on top, which was nice, but I was in so much pain and we were rushing to get to the bottom of the hill before it got too dark. By the time we got down, I was white knuckling it from the pain, wincing with every step, and trying to sing to distract myself (to no avail). Thankfully, we had a nice spot to tent by a river, and I enjoyed one of the best trail meals ever--parmesan pasta side with a pink salmon packet dumped in it. It was so delicious and so comforting. It felt really good to have reached our mileage goal for the day because we were definitely tempted more than once to cut the day short. Perseverance! Also, you know it was a rough day when getting caught in a hail storm was the highlight of the day...