A year ago: -We signed our first log book. -We saw our first white blaze. -We froze our butts off in the freezing rain. -We started a crazy, awesome adventure that I won’t forget. Some day I will stop writing about it—maybe—we’ll see about that—but it’s still fresh in my head even if it was a year ago we started.

Relevant posts: Almost There The Greatest Mountain After leaving Merf behind at Stratton we mosied on our way for the Bigelow Range. We stopped for lunch at the Cranberry Stream campground for lunch and privy before heading up. A parking lot is located pretty near the campsite and some day hikers had come by. One of them ended up talking on the phone and was hiking pretty close to us. It is one thing to use a phone in relative privacy away from a campsite, but to be hiking and talking on the phone??? Really? Chris turned around after awhile and told the guy off and eventually the guy fell…

Relevant posts: The Song of the Loon Coming into Maine was an awesome feeling. We didn’t let the fact that it is the second longest state on the trail daunt us, we’d heard so many good things about Maine. Maine is beautiful but tough and You’ll love Maine, it’s a real treat!. Except that the first miles into Maine really, really sucked. Errrrr….they were just really freakin’ hard. Some places just involved going too incredibly slow up and down jumbles of rocks I thought we would never get anywhere. At this point everyone kept asking us when we might be done but I honestly couldn’t tell them anything. I felt…

Relevant posts: The Whites: A Definition After crossing into New Hampshire we followed the trail along the road that leads to Dartmouth College and it opened up into what I’d imagined an Ivy League university to look like. It was sprawling, had many old buildings and a large, open field was situated in the middle of it all. College kids, clean college kids, were riding their bikes, walking by and smelling so clean! We found the DOC headquarters and sat down to use the computers. After getting our share of the internet we emerged back outside and while Merf and Little Brown had gone to a few other places, we…

Relevant posts: The Green Mountains Mrrr Rain. Stinky Rain. Today is Free Slurpee Day, and Misti’s Birthday Wildflowers and Such Random Shots from Vermont Hello Vermont! This was a state I was most looking forward and thought it would go on my list of favorites, but while it was beautiful it did not make a favorite list. Mostly because I think I thought there would be more views, but it was just so green! Ok, that’s not bad, but I wanted some views! Plus, while we’d been told Mass was a mosquito and fly heaven, it turned out that Vermont was really the horse fly haven. Vermont also goes by…

Relevant posts: Group Hiking Make Time’s Thru-Hike Completion Inch by Inch, Rock by Rock I have to say that Massachusetts surprised me. It turned out to be a lovely state and also a plant community and ecosystem change. Once into Mass we descend into Sages Ravine, a *bleeping* cold water source. I prefer my water Gulf of Mexico warm but the rest of the crew braved the water for a bath. Chris and Merf After getting cooled off we headed for Race Mountain where we stopped to pick blueberries for long periods of time. It’s impossible to resist a clump of sweet and delicious berries! We sat for a long…

Relevant posts: New England Once inside Connecticut we climbed Ten Mile Hill. The day had turned overcast from a mostly bright morning. On the north side of Ten Mile Hill we met some Student Conservation Association volunteers reworking parts of the trail. I know that in general flat rocks on the trail are looked at as being nice, but I personally feel like they are just too slick to walk on and would much prefer bare dirt. I’m not talking about trail that is already littered with rocks, but when a trail has specifically been maintained to add rocks to the trail. Lunch was at the Ten Mile River Lean-to…