Date: 2018-08-09
From: AMC Highland Center Lodge/Crawford Notch

To: Royalty Inn, Gorham, N.H.
Miles today: 0.0

It rained last night, heavily for about 30 minutes. But we didn't care because we were snug in our lodge room. ET was up at 6am and was soon out hunting for coffee. She found it in the lobby where she settled in to enjoy her morning. Spider was up at 6:30am and met ET in the lobby where he had his first cup of coffee. So this is how civilized people live!After planning our morning, we grabbed another cup of coffee and headed to the dining room for breakfast. No Tang or oatmeal, instead bacon, eggs, pancakes, milk and more. This is how a Zero Day should start. After breakfast we went back to our room and packed up for shutte travel. We checked out and waited outside for our 9am shuttle. The AMC shuttle arrived on time and off we went. The shuttle had 2 stops before heading to Gorham. Both stops were at trailheads that gave access to one of the AMC huts. We have noticed that all the huts have an access trail that is the quickest, easiest way to get to the hut and is the way most the overnight guest get there. By the way, the AT is never the easiest way to get to a hut! As an example, on our next planned day of hiking we will need to hike 6.8 miles and gain 3800 feet to get to Mitzpah Springs Hut. From the trailhead at the Highland Center it is 2.6 miles and 2500 foot gain to Mitzpah Springs Hut.We finally made it to Gorham at 10:30am and the driver dropped us off in front of our hotel. Not unexpectedly, our room was not ready this early, so we left our packs in the corner of their lobby area and headed out to do our town chores. Today's picture is of our motel.We checked the local bus schedule and found we had 1.5 hours before the next bus came to take us to Walmart. Since it was lightly raining, we walked a couple blocks to the public library. We read the local newspaper to see what has been happening while we have been in the woods...18 fires burning in California, 600,000 acres burned so far and 1/3 of the state in smoke. Hmm, not sure we are missing much.A few minutes before the bus was scheduled to arrive, we went to the area of the bus stop and boarded the bus when it arrived. 10 minutes later we were at Walmart. We did our shopping, including buying lunch. As we waited for the bus to return, we sat on the grass and ate lunch. At 1:55pm the bus returned and droped us off at the Post Office. We went in and our resupply box was there..Whew!We got back to the motel a 2:30pm and our room was still not ready. So we hung out in the lobby. When it was ready at 3pm we headed to the room to kick back and relax.Our Zero Day physical assessment has us still in pretty good shape. A few scraps and scratches, but no blisters on our feet, no strained muscles and we continue to feel stronger. We keep track of our falls and Spider is "winning" with 4 to ET's 2. No permanent damage due to falls except to our egos and to one of Spider's trekking poles!While watching golf, Spider began reviewing the plan for next week's hike and found a significant error. All plans for returning to the trail were based on a series of reservations at the next 3 huts starting on Sunday. But in reviewing the reservations, the reservations started on SATURDAY not Sunday. Spider contacted the shuttle service asking if we could move our pickup from Sunday to Saturday morning...Nope! Spider called several other shuttle services but they were already committed.So we came up with a new plan. We will use the same AMC shuttle service tomorrow, Friday, to take us back to Crawford Notch. It will get us back to within 0.5 miles of the AT at 1pm. Then we will hike in several miles and find a place to steath camp. That positions us for a reasonably short day on Saturday to get to the first hut, Mitzpah Springs Hut, the day for which we have our reservation. Unfortunately that shortens our rest time, and means we will need to add a couple extra meals to our packs and our hiking "week" goes from 7 to 8 days. Ugh!We had a great dinner at a nearby restaurant, then ET hit the laundromat to wash our clothes (boy did they need it!) while Spider made all the phone calls including cancelling our reservations in Gorham for Friday and Saturday nights. After that we inventoried our food to see what extra we needed and then sprayed our clothes with Permithrin to discourage ticks from hanging around. It was all the things we had planned to leisurely do over the next couple of days, before the change of plans!To bed at 10pm...well past hikers midnight!