7/14 Day 133 Piazza Rock Lean-to to Spaulding Mountain Lean-to -- 16.9 miles
We took a brief break for lunch at a shelter and even got our picture taken by a couple of section hikers; it happens sometimes. After we ditched the paparazzi, we moved on for some more hiking up Lone Mountain until we got to Spaulding Mountain Lean-to. I'm not going to lie; Lone Mountain caught me by surprise. I didn't really remember it being on the map and couldn't figure out why the trail kept going up. Let's just say I was getting a little hangry (hungry and angry) by evening and no shelter means no stop which means no food. Eventually we made it, shaking legs and all, as we always do, and I cooled off by a very cold spring. Our friends showed up later as well, alongside a couple of section hiking south bounders, to enjoy an evening around the fire.
7/15 Day 134 Spaulding Mountain Lean-to Stratton, ME -- 13.5 miles
Up early again to try and make the most of our trip into town. We love small little trail towns; they help make the AT experience what it is. However, getting to town wasn't a straight shot; we had to climb to the peak of Spaulding Mountain, back down to the Carrabassett River then up the South and North Crocker Mountains, all before noon--not bad for a half a day's work. We made it to the road at 12:40 but unfortunately traffic was pretty slow and those that did pass did not want to pick up two smelly hikers. We were out of water and standing along the road in the sun, which wasn't helping. After 20 minutes of our not having any luck, 2 south bounders had shown up, waiting their turn to stick out their thumb, but after seeing our luck decided to just walk the road for a while. Thankfully for us, the 2 Sobos had gotten picked up by the wife of a fellow section hiker who happened to be willing to come back for us. She even had a cooler with one Mountain Dew left in it, which I gladly took and shared with Moose. She dropped us off at the Stratton Motel but there was no one but a dog in the office, for hours.
Moose and I decided to hit up the grocery store across the street about 4 times in a few hours to eat, drink, and eat and drink some more and even buy and pack away our resupply. Giusseppi came in to town just long enough to resupply and head back out, deciding it was best for him to move on. For being in Maine, the temperature was a lot hotter than I expected, a whopping 98 degrees, supposed to only get hotter over the next couple of days. When the owner of the hotel finally got back to assign us a room we realized that the temperature was actually cooler outside the room since most hotels don't have air conditioning in Maine, but the shower and lack of mosquitoes was nice.
Love and prayers always,
Wide Load
e.e. cummings
p.s. SPOILER ALERT..…in case you haven't figured this out by now, Moose and I have already finished the trail, so sorry. We are really, really behind on the blog now that we are back home in the "real world" but we are finishing the story, little by little; we won't leave you hanging, I promise!
