8/28/20 Day 114: Hanover, NH (1750.8) to Trapper John Shelter (1767.5)

Friday, August 28 9:21 pm 16.7 mi

AT 1750.8 Hanover, NH → AT 1767.5 Trapper John Shelter

Weather: Moderate and sunny

Trail Conditions: Fairly rugged – straight from 2 relatively smooth easy Vermont days right into New Hampshire granite

My Condition: Feeling the post-zero “hangover”

Hikers met: NOBO Primo, also met kilt-wearing SOBO Whole Foods from Pittsburgh either today or tomorrow, can’t quite remember which

One of my more social days on trail – hiked with Puddles and Blue for most of the morning into afternoon, with Primo for a little bit of late afternoon, and Puddles into camp in the evening. We talked parents, the ways in which we’d changed on trail, and hiked/danced to 80s tunes for much of the day.

Post Trail Analysis

We knew we had entered the calm before the storm, the deep breath before the plunge. The Whites were on the horizon, and we all just hoped that we were ready to take on the challenge! Needing a break from audiobooks and podcasts, we had decided to listen to different eras of music each day. Today was 80s day, tomorrow was 90s day, the day after was 00s day, etc. If you had asked me before the trail if I liked music from the 80s, I probably would have said no, absolutely not. I would have been quite wrong! From “Never Gonna Give You Up” to “867-5309,” Van Halen and Bruce Springsteen to Queen and The Rolling Stones, Billy Joel to Michael Jackson, there’s a lot of good music from that era. Plenty of bad music too, but that’s what Spotify’s skip button is for. And if you never want to hit the skip button, there’s always “Papa Tom’s Time Machine,” Hummingbird’s dad’s playlist of non-stop hit after hit. I did my best impersonation of Rocky’s trainer as “Eye of the Tiger” came on, pushing Blue up the trail and yelling that she was going to “eat lightning and crap thunder.” We ran into Wanderer at the shelter tonight, having last seen him at Stanimal’s in Waynesboro, VA. There weren’t a ton of unclaimed tent spots worth using, so we ended up camping near the privy – it was full to bursting, so no one but the truly, truly desperate would be using it!

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