Day 10 - Wednesday, June 22

Linda

We slept in an old squeaky double bed, and I was awake off and on all night. Got up at 5:30 and cleaned up around the house, as a proper guest should. We exchanged names and addresses, and said our thank you and good-byes to Bob as he headed home to Boston. The rest of us walked down to the only other restaurant in town, a coffee shop named - what else - "The Coffee Shoppe", to have breakfast. Picked up a few more groceries and took our stuff down to the laundromat to repack it.

We reluctantly left town around 9:20, knowing we'd just be cold and wet and dirty in a few minutes. Walked on the road for a ways this morning, then off into the bogs again. We crossed a bridge around noon and could hear Mike hailing us, but couldn't see him anywhere. We walked on a few yards and found him sitting on a screened in porch of a lavender house with lavender bird houses, and plastic ducks in the yard. It was wet everywhere along the road, with no good place to stop, so he had gone up and knocked on the door and asked if he could eat lunch on the porch. It seemed a nervy thing to do, but who were we to argue, and of course we joined him, since it was dry. Mike just finished his junior year of high school in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, and seemed like a nice kid, even if a bit on the preppy side. He had all new equipment, and an impressive array of gourmet fare. He would definitely eat well, it nothing else.

We had more road walking to do after lunch, then a long uphill ridge to the Breakneck Ridge Shelter. Ronald was really hauling, but I managed to keep up pretty well. We lost Mike about half way up the hill. Guess all his fancy cheeses and summer sausages were slowing him down. Got to the Lean-to about 1:45 and built a fire. Mike came in about 10 minutes later, and then Ray rolled in around 2:30. Ray said he left Monson at 10:15, so can really haul when he wants to. Steve and John finally made it by about 4:30, so our merry band of hikers was complete.

Cooked our dinner of AT Mix over the fire. It was actually pretty good. Ed Garvey would have been proud, since we got the recipe from his book "Appalachian Hiker - Adventure of a Lifetime". We were all in out bags by 6:00 trying to write in our diaries, but got off on so many other subjects, and laughed so hard we were having trouble doing any writing. Monty Python, Frank Zappa and Saturday Night Live were among the topics discussed at length. Not a bad day really. Hiked 9 miles today, for a total of 123.3 miles.

Ron

It rained today for the sixth day in a row. It was hard to get up this morning from a warm bed. We went to the restaurant for breakfast. My stomach was too nervous to eat much. After purchasing the rest of our supplies we left town around 9:30. We were greeted after about a mile by the first bog. Fortunately they weren't too bad and we finally made it to the Breakneck Ridge Lean-to in reasonable time.

I guess we're getting in better shape now. My feet are still sore from all the road waking. I hope there's no rain tomorrow.

(9 Miles- 123.3 Total)