Legs and Borders

Weather could not decide what it wants to do today. I've ended up hiking alongside a trail family. As expected it was raining in the morning, my gear has been drying all night inside the shelter and it ended up being semi-dry which was a good news. I've packed up and left at 5:30 AM First stop was The Northern Cookie Lady's house, unfortunately I was here too early to get a cookie and a hibiscus tea but it was fine I've met Seconds and his Tramily, they've spend night here and we're just heading out. We hiked together until the city of Dalton and had a breakfast at Juice N' Java, their breakfast burrito was very good but not quite big enough for my hiker hunger so I went to a nearby gas station and had a slice of pizza as well. Next stop was the Dollar General few miles down the trail at the town of Cheshire. Seconds and his crew were always one step ahead of me, I convinced them to hike additional 8 miles to Mark Noepler ...

A shockwave has been sent across the Appalachian Trail community as a sad news of death due to severe weather conditions of two day hikers father and daughter while climbing Mount Katahdin has appeared on media. Mount Katahdin is our final stop on the journey north along the AT. We are being constantly reminded that nature as beautiful as it is, can also be treacherous and unforgiving. More details about this tragedy can be found  here Day started and ended with rain, I feel like we can't get away from it for more than a day or two recently. On the other hand mosquitoes were much less present because of it which was a welcome change. Someone has left a trekking pole behind and wrote a note "free AT" on it, as one of my old trekking poles has lost few parts during this hike I have replaced it with the one on offer, it was the second piece of gear (first being the sleeping bag) I've replaced so far, it was somewhat emotional as I hiked with this ...

Back on the road and into the next state. The whole house woke up at 5 AM, Vanessa was shuttling people into various places on the trail from 6 AM, I've ate pea and ham soup with few tortillas and said my goodbyes, it wouldn't be long before I've seen people on trail today as they've all been slack packing the opposite direction to where I was going. Weather was really good after yesterday's rain, some of the rocks were still wet and I slipped on one of them during the descent from Bear Mountain, luckily it ended up with only few scratches on my left arm and a bruised ego. Before Mount Race trail was going through lovely ledges with nice views, it was quite foggy though and the visibility wasn't great. I went past California here, then another girl that stayed with us at the hostel last night. DeeDee was hiking slightly different section, I haven't seen her until the afternoon. At this point Appalachian Trail left Connecticut and started it's journey tho...