Miles: 5.2 (plus another 1.5 miles off trail to the airplane crash!)
This post is pretty scattered, so please bear with me...
I woke up this morning and left camp after the Nobos but before the college kids. I hiked a half mile and was in New Hampshire! Whoo-hoo! I have completed one state of this trail! Only 13 more to go!! I was feeling on top of the world, so I decided just to take a short, easy day and enjoy the sites.
First, a recap of the Numbers:
Total Miles: 281.4
Days since beginning this trip: 38 (5.5 weeks)
Days Hiking: 31
Zero Days: 7
Average Miles/Day: 7.4 if you count all 38 days, 9.0 if you count only hiking days
Pounds Lost: 13
Snickers Eaten-too many to count-currently I eat 2 regular size Snickers a day
Number of Moose Seen: three
Number of Bears Seen: Zero
Back to today- The Plane Crash:
When I saw a local guy and his two friends walking up from the side of the mountain where there did not appear to be a trail and asked where they had been they told me about a plane that crashed in 1954 that is still on the side of the mountain. The guy offered to walk back down and show me the way, so I followed him into the brush. My brother says that "Hi, wanna follow me off the path, over the side of the mountain to check out a 60 year old plane crash?" is the lamest pick-up line he's ever heard and he can't believe I fell for it. But in my defense (?) the crash site was kinda cool. I just finished reading "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer. If you haven't read the book or seen the movie it is a detailed reporting about a young man who wandered his way into the Alaskan wilderness and starved to death in an abandoned bus. I felt a little creepy walking around the plane fuselage and drawing parallels to the bus in Alaska. A newspaper article in the airplane detailed how two of the seven passengers on board died. The plane crashed on November 30, 1954. When the survivors tried to walk away to find help they found the snow was above their hips. They waited two days before they were found by rescue teams.
Hiking Plan (?) (My cousin recently reminded me that she feels it is ludicrous to have 'a plan' for a 2,000+ mile trip; she may have a point.)
Welcome to New Hampshire! I think that I will hike to the first town, Gorham, NH, and then skip the White Mountains. I hope to hitchhike farther down the trail. My body feels good-minimum blisters and muscle strains, etc. But my brain is sick and tired of climbing. I want to hike. I want to get on some even terrain and catch up some miles. I don't want to climb hand over hand up rocks, I want to hike (you know, it's like walking). But first I have to get to Gorham (the first town/road crossing in New Hampshire). I think maybe then I will hike as far south as I can before it is too cold, then go to Indiana for the winter (get some good niece love) and go to Springer Mountain (the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail) in the spring, hike north to whatever midpoint I stopped at this fall, then hike the White Mountains as the grand finale.
I have to continue to decide as I go what I think this trip is about. First I thought that it was about grieving, I think that was a good assessment. Five weeks and 281 miles in I feel a lot better on that front. But now that I've been around so many hikers I might have been bitten by 'the hiker bug'. I think I want to finish the trail. Or at least, when I think about stopping, I want to continue on this adventure as long as my money and health holds out. I am having a blast seeing beautiful sights, getting stronger every day, meeting new people, learning new things, sleeping under the stars, swimming in mountain ponds, etc. Every time that I actually consider doing something besides hiking right now (about every three miles-(because there is a hard climb, or mud, or bugs, or I'm hungry))- I come to the same conclusion- there is nothing I would prefer to do at this time in my life than to be on the A.T. And so I keep hiking-and loving it.
Me-Happy to be at the State Line!!!!!!!!!!!!
Airplane on the mountain
Me at Gentian Pond Shelter
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