Today marks our entry into the famous AT "100-mile Wilderness". It's a hundred-mile section of the trail with no paved road, stores or phones. The sign at the start says to carry 10 days worth of food and prepare for a difficult hike. I was curious to see how much it had changed in the last twenty years. When we hiked it, it did seem for the most part like a wilderness. What I remembered the most were the extensive bogs we needed to travel through and the lack of bog bridges. Then, our only connection with civilization was the sight of a single car and the crossing of a number of single lane dirt roads. The only people we saw were hiking the wilderness.

It didn't take long hiking to determine that most of the trails through the bogs had been rerouted. A fact that frankly I was quite glad of. The hilly terrain wasn't too easy but it was better than bogs. The distant sound of heavy machinery also gave me a good indication that thing in the wilderness had certainly changed. I don't guess we can expect five more days of solitude.

I'm not sure if the terrain we hiked through this morning was all that bad, or if I was just suffering from Shaw's Revenge. For most of the morning my stomach was feel queasy. At least I wasn't the only one. Whispering Pine didn't feel well either. We stopped for a long break at Little Wilson Falls and I took some Pepto-Bismol. After resting for an hour I was feeling better.

I don't mean to imply that Shaw's is a bad place to stay. It's just that the food tends to be generous, and on the greasy side. When mixed with all of the other junk food and beer we consumed the last two days, certain side effects are not unexpected. It would have been better to have more fresh fruit and vegetables during our stay. The other place to stay in Monson is The Pie Lady. There seems to be quite a rivalry brewing between the two. If I had to do it again I'd spend one night at each place. Shaw's is a nice place, but The Pie Lady's place seems to be quieter and more restful. I guess it all depends upon your taste.

I was grateful I was only suffering from indigestion, and not from some parasite in the water we were drinking. For the most part we have been treating all of our water with iodine since our Sweetwater pump failed. As with most things, I'm not as religious about water purification as I should be. On our whole '77 hike we treated our water only once. In the years since then I've seldom bothered much about the water I've drunk. Maybe I've just been lucky. I don't know. On this trip we've tried to be more careful. We were supposed to start using our pump again from Monson on. Unfortunately the Sweetwater people had not shipped everything we needed to use our pump. So we're back on the iodine.

By this afternoon I was definitely feeling better. Shortly after we arrived at the shelter, Joplin, Thunder Chicken and Minty Fresh arrived. Minty and Thunder decided to continue on to the top of Barren Mountain. They wanted to get some good sunset and sunrise pictures and this would be their last chance for awhile. Joplin stayed with us in the shelter. She sent home her tent and stove to have a light pack in the wilderness. So she was forced to stay in shelters. To save weight on food she was eating only cereal and crackers. Five boxes of different dry cereal with powdered milk. I couldn't think of a worse way to enter the wilderness. When Brandon and I finished as much of our spaghetti dinner as we could eat, we gave her our leftovers.

Today we left Monson after a day and a half of relaxing. We got out around 8:30 and hiked the first three or so miles to Leeman Brook Lean-to pretty quickly. We took a short rest there, then started back on the trail. We were soon passed by Shadow and Minty, who were moving faster than we were. We came to a waterfall, (Little Wilson Falls), where we all stopped to take a long break and have lunch. Whispering Pine eventually showed up, followed by Seeker Street.

We soon left, leaving them behind resting. In a mile or so we were passed by Shadow, just before the ford of Big Wilson Stream. We crossed easily without getting a drop on us. We took another break at Wilson Valley Lean-to. It was only another 4.5 miles to Long Pond Stream Lean-to, where we planned to stop tonight, so we put on our packs and continued our journey. It was up and down, up and down over really tiring ground. We finally caught up to Creeper, but he was already camped for the night. After talking to Creeper for a while we went on. Joplin and Minty passed by us, too. We thought we were only a mile from Long Pond, but it turned out we were wrong. We passed by a creek that was really the one Creeper thought he was camping by.

When we finally got to the shelter, Minty and Thunder Chicken were there, but they were getting ready to go on. It was just Joplin and us for the night. We thought some others would show up, but they never did. We made spaghetti for dinner, then gave some leftovers to Joplin when we found out she was doing the whole wilderness on five boxes of cereal. She was really going ultra-light.