Trail Notes – August 23 (Andover, ME)

Before I plunge into the tale of today, I just want to clarify the previous post – I wasn’t asking or expecting people to send money. 😦 It was an ill-considered thought to even include it as an option.

As you can tell from the title, I have not yet escaped Andover. Like Rutland, VT, this town has a certain blackholish quality that has me in an orbit that I am struggling to escape. Tisn’t easy!

I caught the 7 am shuttle out to the trailhead; well and good. As the shuttle van disappeared down the highway, I noticed that my Camelbak was swinging emptily as I slung the pack on. “Curses”, thought I, “I forgot to refill my water at the hostel.” So I reached for my large, secondary water bottle to refill the primary.

It was not there. It was happily sitting on the porch at the hostel where I had left it in anticipation of refilling it with good, purified water from the faucet. This was a serious problem; without adequate water storage, hiking is a very bad idea. You have to be able to carry sufficient water. In this case, the next source of water was over 4 miles away, over a major mountain.

So, I sighed, and settled down to wait… I had taken the 8 am shuttle, and I knew there was another one coming out to the trailhead at 9. I took that one back to the hostel to be reunited with my water bottle. I was happy to see it, even though it just had a plastic look to give me.

The next shuttle out was at noon. I could take that one, and at least get some miles in today. In the meanterim though, I was hungry, and went over at 10:30 for some delicious eggs Benedict.

Somehow, somewhere, thanks to an insidious nudge from NevaP, I suspect, sometime during that brunchy meal, thru-hiker Ziptie morphed back into geocacher Sioneva, and noon came and went sometime during the time I was out hunting down a geocache in Andover, Maine, a state not yet colored in in the map of states I have cached in. This has now been remedied. Maine is now red, and I may re-don the thru-hiker cap (literally speaking!) and continue on my way tomorrow. Assuming I have all my waterbottles, all my marbles, and can reach escape velocity. I still intend to reach Rangeley early Friday – I will just have to hike longer days tomorrow and Thursday.

I really was not hinting that people should send me money. Forgive me.

I hike on!