Wednesday, August 26 9:14 pm 14.4 mi (written Thursday, August 27)
AT 1736.4 Thistle Hill Shelter → AT 1750.8 Hanover, NH/Hotel Coolidge, White River Junction
Weather: Cold overnight last night (down to 40 degrees!), cool/moderate rest of the day
Trail Conditions: Smooth sailing – gentle trail, no big climbs or descents, decent bit of road walking today
My Condition: Looking forward to a zero tomorrow! My body will appreciate the break
Highlights from Wednesday and Thursday: Dinner with Hummingbird’s mom and dad Becky and Tom, breakfast at the diner, new shoes at Omer and Bob’s (the bright orange ones I had my eyes on from their website), shopping trip to Eastern Mountain Sports and LL Bean, resupply at Food Co-Op and Price Chopper, cheesy elephant (like white elephant gift exchange, except the gifts are all blocks of fancy cheese. Blue got me a 2 year aged cheddar, I got Puddles a truffle cheese. Blue artfully wrapped my gift in her puffy jacket, I got a gift bag and tissue paper, put a plain ol’ cheese stick and a singing hot dog birthday card in the top, and her fancy cheese at the bottom of the bag), dinner at Thai place in Hanover, breakfast at Lou’s. Blue rented a car, and we ended up with a new Jeep Wrangler!
Post Trail Analysis
New Hampshire state’s motto: “Live Free or Die.” I had a package waiting for me at the Hanover, NH post office – my cold weather gear. I’d need it in the coming weeks through rugged New Hampshire and Maine! I would summit in this orange pair of Hoka Speedgoats, although they definitely wouldn’t stay that bright vibrant orange for long. This hotel room, unfortunately, was a little warm and did not have air conditioning; fortunately, neither did our tents, so it was pretty easy to make do without this added luxury. The hotel was a rather interesting building and quite historic, with hallways right out of The Shining, mismatched floor plans, some large grand staircases and some quite small, an incredibly slow moving elevator with room for four people NOT wearing packs (We made it work for four with packs, but barely. Just had to squish Puddles into the corner!), high ceilings and exposed pipes, tall windows and doorways, large oil and baseboard heaters, and a zero depth entry shower without a water-containing lip. Puddles ran an interesting experiment on me at the EMS/LL Bean mall – she got me a piece of chocolate which was disguised as a carrot. Being strongly anti-veggie, I was appalled by its veggie-like appearance. Being a chocolaholic, however, I could smell through the disguise. It looked like a carrot, but it smelled like chocolate! Part of me was worried it was harboring bits of carrots, or carrot juice, or something sinister. I forced myself to eat it, and was pleasantly surprised that it was 100% genuine, carrot-free, chocolate. Cheesy elephant was so much fun – at this point, we were calling our collective trail family “The Cheese Freaks” which was an incredibly fitting name. Speaking for myself, I had a major cheese problem and ate 2-3 blocks a day by now. We drew names out of a hat and tried to be as sneaky as possible while resupplying to preserve the surprise. Unfortunately, Hummingbird got lucky and beat me in our final head-to-head ice cream eating competition of the trail. We watched the TV show Tough As Nails tonight. They were doing a lumberjack competition with both chainsaws and axes, and we were treated to Puddles’s expert commentary on both! Fine Line wasn’t feeling great and would extend her stay here, crossing paths with Jinx.
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