Date: 2008-09-05
From: Potaywandi lean to

To: rainbow stream lean to
Miles today: 18.5
Weather: broken clouds

Well...where do I start? today started out like a normal day an early riser in the shelter woke us all up at 5:30am with opening ziplock bags, crinkling his stuff...we all woke up and packe up headed out, the terrain has become consderably flatter thses past few days so we made great timing leaving at 7:10 am and getting 10 miles in by 10:45am despite the roots and rocks, we stopped @ Waleigh shelter for an early lunch looking at the map figuring we had about 8 miles left to hke that day, whichk included a small, yet steep Nasuntabunt mt with the flatter terrain w had become spoinled and alittle weary or mts so jokingly we thougth it would be nice if there was a way to skip the mt altogether and then head to the shelter, we all laughed as we knew following the white blazes would definlty lead us up the mt, so we asked pacer to examine the map, welooke for another trail to take that would take us around Nasuntabungt mt, notn to be found, I prepared myself to stop being lazy and head on however creeekdiver continued to examine the map and with eyes lit up and exicited burst pointed to the lake on the map that the trail had been following most of the morning, she pointed to and trace the edge of the lake as it then led to a small road which eventually ed back to the AT and then 2 miles up oto the rainbow lea to, so successfully skipping the climb up Nesuntabunt, now this possibilty sounded promising and gave me hope of a leisruly exciting stroll on the edge of the lake, the sandy beach we had been on showrtly in the AM, on the AT, of course I was excited about this and immediatly jumped on the idea and began to persuade pacer that this would be a great plan, he didnt' seem to agree, so creekdiver and I asked to take the map and follow creeekdiver plan, but pacer didnt wanna part with the map ...so creekdiver reminded us that we needed to have an adventure as we had been follwoing the white blazes for too long reluctantly pacer agreed and we were off on our adventure, convinced it was a good idea, I mean what could go wrong? so we bushwacked from the shelter down to the lake following a rock path that looked like it had once had water flowing down it, some slick mud but we had seen worse in VT and NH. so putting on our crocs and fording some water we ended up on the beach walking in our intended direction, so to shorten the saga... lets just say that beach diteriated into large rock boulders which we started to hop over, we bushed waked in the woods, walked through swampy quicksand mud/water infested by leeches, fallling in 2 inch mossy holes and getting stuck with both legs sinking in mud up to our calfs (in the words of some...TWIX!!!), ending up at a camp and walking down a dirt road leading to the trail where we saw sled dogs chained up to little box houses. At last we ended up back on the AT following those white blazes. we finally arrived at the shelter, having had quite the adventure (little different than what we had imagined, but all the while quite hilarious) when snakewhisperer got to the shelter all we couild do to explain the "short cut" was laugh. so when someone offers a "short cut"just tell them to put the map down and slowly back away. So...we didnt have to climb nesuntabunt mt! rainbow lean to is amazingly beautiful, right next to a pine grove in front of the stream and had a totem pole as part of the clothesline. what a day, im tired...