Hiked today: 18
Hiked total: 271.8
To katahdin: 1906.5
...or so it felt. We woke up to 4 inches of snow this morning. It was incedibly cold, and snowing harder than it had anytime before on this trip. After we made breakfast and packed up, we got ready to say goodbye to the scouts. Did I mention there was one named Ian? Who had my backpack, stove AND cookset? He will be hiking the AT before he knows it. Anyway we departed troop 245 and made our way to Hot Springs.
The snow was relentless. Andta beard was frozen, I must admit I wish I had enough of a beard for it to freeze, and everything was covered in snow. It was incredibly beautiful for a while, but then it began to feel confining. Everything we saw was white, and we were following white blazes. It started getting cold, and the snow started soaking through our clothes and boots and then we entered our quiet mode where neither of us felt like talking because we just wanted to be warm and dry.
After our snack, we saw some footprints which were nice to follow - its kind of hard following a path covered in white snow marked with white blazes. After a little while we caught up to the feet making the prints. We met Hooch, Doc and Danser who had spent the night at the shelter we took a break at. They were training for a south bound hike next year. After talking with them long enough to lose feeling in our fingers (5 mins or so) we trucked on.
Finally after 6 hours, we made it to the shelter just before town. We stopped to eat a little more and call the hostels while taking a breather. Another big name on the AT is Elmer. He runs a hostel in town which is essentially his house with lots of bunks. So we called him up to ask if we could do work for stay. They said most likely not. So we decided to call one more place before giving in to shelling out the dough. We called up the Duckett House Inn because our book said they had a bunk house. So we called and a guy named Frank answered. He said the bunkhouse was feezing and he didn't have a room with two beds. We told him we had been sharing a 4 foot wide tent for a while and a king size was incredibly spacious! After a minute of thinking, he said he could come up with some stuff for us to do.
We finally got into town and the inn. We walked in to see this gorgeous 19th century colonial style place. First off, the kitchen is my dream kitchen with Vulcan range, grill top, and industrial fridges. The rest of the place is filled with antiques and just very nice things. Frank seems like a really nice guy (especially since he is letting us work for stay in this beautiful inn) although we haven't talked to him much since he had to leave. We did talk with the other guests which is a couplw from Charlotte. Jerry is actually from the same town as Andy and went to the same high school! So we talked for a while after we ate.
By the way, all the cafes and diners were closed, so we had to get stuff. This is what we ate: a digiorno pizza, 6 corn dogs, 4 rolls with sloppy joes, creamed corn, mashed potatoes, Reeses icecream, and chocolate milk and a large bottle of red wine. We feel pregnant.
We will sleep it off and the work off our stay and resupply tomorrow. We are warm, clean, have clean clothes, and happy. Good night.
Ps I will be putting more pictures up tomorrow but have to use a different account so all the new pictures will be above the old ones.
via BB
