Date: 2008-07-31
From: Frye Notch Lean-to ME

To: Hall Mountain Lean-to ME 
Miles today: 10.5

Day 165 Thursday July 31 ¢ Hall Mountain Lean-to ME - Miles Today: 10.5 Total Miles: 1925.7It rained a little bit last night - not too hard - and we had no issues with the tent. When we awoke, the rain had stopped. Although a nero day might have been in the works for us today, we got up at our normal 5:00 and were on the trail before 6:00.An hour up the trail, there was a little rumble noise in the distance. We looked at each other with question marks in our eyes and Brakeman remarked, ¢A plane.¢ Yeah right. We're near Andover Maine, population 10. I don't think there's any plane flying that low to make that kind of noise. Its not like 747s take off near here. We continued to hike. Ten minutes later, another noise. We looked at each other again and Brakeman remarked this time, "Dump trucks". Yeah right. Reality is that it was 7:00 in the morning and it was thundering. It was not long before we were hiking in the rain with our full raingear on. We wanted to keep our hiking clothes dry so that we could score a hitch in them without looking like drowned rats. It¢s also nicer to run around in town with dry clothes.We got to the road about 8:30 and were surprised to see that there was no yellow line on the road. Oh no. 8:30 in the morning, no traffic and not even a yellow line on the road. Not a good sign. We wondered how often cars went down this road. We started to walk the 8-miles to town, figuring that perhaps there was a side road that would come out to our road and give us more traffic. About 10 minutes later, we heard a car coming down the road and our spirits lifted. Perhaps this person would give us a ride. It was a Frito-Lay truck. We still stuck out our thumbs in hopes that maybe he would pick us up, but we also knew it was probably against their corporate policy. One could still hope, though. No dice. We walked 5 more minutes and finally realized this is ridiculous - there was no way we can hike 8 miles to town and there was no point in putting wear and tear on our feet with long pavement walking, so we stopped, got out the cell phone and tried to call Andover Guest House. Got their answering machine. Tried their cell phone. Got voice mail. This was the first of many disappointments with the Andover Guest House. Luckily, a few seconds later, the first car that we'd seen on the road - about 25 minutes after we started hitching - came down the road and picked us up! So very sweet. Our 10-minute record for scoring a hitch was no longer intact but given the circumstances, 25-minutes wasn't a bad deal.We got into town, walked to the Andover Guest House and asked the hostel host if a package arrived for us. He told us that there was no package for us but the post office is just 2 doors down the road. So we walked 2 doors down the street and found not a post office, but an auto garage. We asked where the post office was and were told it was a couple more doors down the street. Guess who has our food drop box? Yep, the post office! Why? Because the Andover Guest House people don't go by and pick up their boxes even though they get the little slips in the mail telling them that there's a box waiting for them. The post office lady was quite upset with them. Apparently this is an on going issue. We were none to happy either as what would have happened if we, or anyone else, came to town when the post office was closed. That was the precise reason why we had the box mailed to the Guest House address. Oh well, we lucked out this time.We went back to the Guest House and inquired about a shuttle back to the trail. The man explained that a shuttle would be headed that way in 20 minutes. The cost was $7 a head, which in our minds was highway robbery for an 8-mile ride. There was even a 4 person minimum ¢to cover their costs¢. Hmm, $28 to go 16-miles round trip. I think that ought to cover the cost!Not wanting any part of that scam, we grabbed our stuff and left. Across the street was a very small deli/grocery store, where we bought a few food items to supplement our food drop. We sat at a little picnic table outside on a covered porch, repackaging our food and catching up on phone calls, as cell phone reception in Maine has not been overly abundant. We called both sets of parents to tell them that we may be running 2 days ahead of schedule as a result of skipping Andover and most likely Stratton. We got to say hello to everybody at the family reunion and said we were sorry we weren't there. Sounds like the reunion was winding down after a week of pretty good weather. We also left a message with our insurance claim rep requesting a status of our storage unit water damage claim.   Hopefully he will leave us an update via voice mail. As we sat at the picnic table, we kept an eye on how many cars turned down the road where we needed to score a hitch. We saw a few - not a ton - but a few. By the time we had finished repackaging our food, the rain had stopped so we headed down the road .1 of a mile to begin our hitch. We intentionally positioned ourselves just past the other hostel in case they were running their shuttle. Sure enough, within 10 minutes we had scored a FREE hitch back to the trailhead with the other guesthouse, called Pine Ellis. Guess we know where to stay next time we are in town.At 11:00 we were dropped off back at the trail. Not only did the other hostel pick us up, but also they did not charge us for gas! Standing at the trailhead was High Life! He was supposed to be past us, as he was going to do a 20-miler the other day. He decided to hitch into town. When we explained how long it took for our hitch, he totally understood as last year he walked 3 miles along this road before he scored a hitch.Back on the trail, we had 6 miles to go, with 50% of it being in the rain. We got to camp at 3:00 just after another downpour and found all the tent sites but one basically flooded. We grabbed the one hopefully safe tent site, and pitched our tent putting the rain fly up first as rain was still dripping off the trees. By 3:30 we were settled in the tent and decided to eat dinner so we could hang the food bag before the next rain.Everything is soaked - the rain packs, the rain jackets, socks, shoes, and Grasshopper¢s rain pants (Brakeman did not have his on this afternoon). Even the tent is soaked. Everything is beginning to smell again. We're really hoping that at some point in time, our life will begin to dry. We can tell from the forest here in Maine that we¢re in a wet climate, as there is lots of moss and ferns. So as we said, there's about 19 more hiking days and we're figuring about 19 more rain days. We really have no expectations of arriving to Katahdin either dry or clean. The amount of mud on the trail is just a whole lot more than the southern states and we're quite dirty every evening by the time we arrive at camp. It's 5:50, 65 degrees and guess what it's doing. Yep, you can probably hear it. It's raining. Every local person we talk to in every town along the way talks about how this is the wettest summer they have had. We are receiving twice the normal amount of rain! Lucky us. (Y A W N) And someday I might actually get through one of these journals without yawning. However, I doubt it. The big news of the day is that we have just 250.5 miles left!! Goodnight from rainy, hopefully soon to be sunshiny, Maine.