1800 miles has all led up to this. Tonight I’m sleeping at the base of Mount Moosilauke and the beginning of the White Mountains. Just the other day we met a fellow in Hanover who was excited to learn we were thru hiking and said we were making great progress but also said that the local saying is that being in Hanover means you’ve done 80% of the miles but only put in 50% of the effort needed to get to Katahdin. The Whites are where you start to make up that gap between miles and effort.
Today was an excellent prelude to that next phase of the adventure. It was probably the coldest day yet on the trail with the exception of day 1 back in Georgia and maybe one day in the Smokies. I was able to hike comfortably in my fleece for most of the day, even on the steep climb uphill in the morning. That was the climb up Cube Mountain, and it was a fun one with rewarding views at the top. We could see back toward the firetower on yesterdays big climb and miles of surrounding mountainsides. With that done we were on our way down to the road into the little town of Wentworth where Miranda was needing to pick up a package at the PO with new shoes. I had finally convinced her to try the same shoes I was wearing that had totally changed my hiking experience. Landon decided to wait on the trail while we hitched in, I went along hoping to get some good food at the general store. We got to the post office only to find their hours changed and they were closed for lunch for over three hours. There wasn’t much way we could wait that long and make it back to the trail and hike the miles we wanted. It was just a tiny town though, I told Miranda we should to the general store, get some lunch, and come back by the PO – maybe the postmaster would be back early, or we might even find him at the store. We walked half a mile to Shawnee’s General Store and as we were looking around the postmaster walked right by us. We stopped her and asked if there was any way we could get a package even though it was lunch time and she agreed, she said to meet her back there in a few minutes. We got our food and cold drinks and went back up the street, but there was more bad news. There was no package there. Looks like there had been some confusion over how the shoes were going to be shipped, and they had gone via UPS and couldn’t be delivered to a post office. Eventually Miranda got UPS to reroute them to Lincoln, NH where we will be tomorrow.
We ended up getting back to the trail in good time and met up with Landon just ahead at the next shelter. The rest of the day was a kind of calm before the storm. We covered about 11 miles between that side trip and the final shelter, almost all of it was pretty nice smooth trail with no major climbs. A nice way to set up our big climb tomorrow. The only problem is how cold its going to be tonight, probably below freezing. Luckily it doesn’t look like rain and all we have for tomorrow is the eight miles up and over Moosilauke into town.