August 11

Sheets - soft bed - pillows. Do I really need to leave this heavenly place? It feels so nice and the birds are singing to me.

But it is time. Beth and I get up and start packing.

First stop - FOOD. We picked up some bagels and smoothies, then to the grocery store for laundry detergent. Then we went to the laundromat to wash our sleeping clothes. We left the rest of the detergent with a little sign that said "for hikers".

After our clothes were clean. We picked up our food drop at the PO. We were going to sort it out under the trees on the law, but it looked like the rain would start soon so we started going inside. Just as we went by the parking lot a cab stopped to pick up a couple and I asked the cabbie to come back in 45 minutes for us. What luck! I was wondering how we were going to call a cab out here at the PO (the PO is a little ways from town and we didn't want to walk back). Anyway we had a lot of food to throw away. But I couldn't find a hiker box. So I made one with all of our leftovers. Basically I had packed 6 days of food for this section, but we were only going to be going for 3 days - maybe 4 if we can't do two 10 mile days in a row.

Beth got to pick what we would take for lunch. She picked out all the yummy candy and balance bars. We tossed the summer sausage but kept the beef jerky. And we were almost through sorting and getting ready by the time the cab came.

Now I really liked this cab company they only charged me $20 to get to Mad Tom Notch (Mathison? or something like that), but he hadn't a clue as to where to go. He was going to drive me up Rte 7. But I had my guidebook and it has directions.

We were dropped off at 11:10 and we made Gatorade. Then I went to go to pee before starting up the trail and a snake hissed at me. No problem. I can go somewhere else.

Our hiking day was going to be easy today, only 4.6 miles. We climbed up Styles Peak in the dappled sunlight, occasionally losing the sun to the clouds. Near the top is a wonderful hemlock forest and the scent was beguiling. It was so much nicer than the smell of sweaty hikers - which despite the clean clothes - was how I was starting to smell again.

At the top we stopped for lunch. There is a nice overlook - partially blocked by trees and mostly blocked by clouds, but it had a beautiful butterfly flittering around to make up for the lack of a view - and a swarm of flies to take our minds off the beautiful butterfly.

With 7oz less tuna in our packs we lightly ambled down the trail. There were lots of up-downs until Peru Peak and then it was Down - Down all the away to Peru Peak Shelter.

Three others stayed here at the shelter tonight - Patches; Slacker; and Tiperary. We made too much food for dinner and had no trouble giving it away. Though they did think dehydrated TVP burritos were weird.

As we went to bed the mosquitoes came out in force, so we all DEETed up.

And it poured tonight, and poured.