Total trail mileage: 1924.5
Starting location: East B Hill Rd
Ending location: Surplus Pond
Weather: 64 - 81 degrees during the day. Mostly clear and sunny all
day.
I am at
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=44.673410,+-70.863291
After waking up and taking care of resupply, I headed down the street
to get breakfast. The main street was a zoo because of the festival.
It was especially crazy because Andover is such a tiny town. I was
able to get a table in the restaurant though. After a full breakfast
I picked up a pint of ice cream and returned to the hostel.
Sweettooth had just finished a 4.5 mile race (he came in first for his
age group), and Sweettooth and Bugsy were headed to the parade so I
joined them. We saw firetrucks from probably every nearby town. They
were giving out candy to the kids, but they didn't have any pity on
thruhikers. We then had a BBQ chicken meal at the fire station while
Smokestack and Apple Juice entered a pie eating contest. The contest
wasn't what we had imagined though. The person that won had to eat
the pie the fastest without using their hands. Thruhikers are
endurance eaters not sprinters, so the two only received honorable
mentions. After that we had fried dough, looked at the submissions to
the photography competition, and saw all the historic cars that had
been assembled.
After that I returned back to the hostel to see what time everyone was
getting shuttled back to the trailhead. It turned out that the time
was set for 3pm, and people had just started watching Ocean's 11.
While watching the movie, I was contemplating taking another zero, but
I should keep moving or I will never finished. When we were loading
up the van though, everyone else except Smokestack and me decided to
bail and take a zero.
I got back on trail by 3:30, but I wasn't committed to hiking through
the rest of the daylight. I just wanted to get back on trail, because
breaking free from town is always the hardest part. Now that I am out
here I can more easily get going tomorrow. So, when I saw a really
nice campsite next to a pond, I decided to stop despite going less
than 2 miles.
I read the rest of the afternoon. I was hoping to see a moose by the
pond as there are lots of nearby droppings. No moose yet, but I did
see a beaver swimming around. The temperature dropped quite a bit and
I had to actually put on my fleece.
I am hoping to do a long day tomorrow and get back on track. There is
supposedly a pond up ahead with a nice sandy beach for swimming. That
might be out of my reach tomorrow, but that all depends on how early I
can get started and what the terrain is like.
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