Day 144

Weather:
Overcast and breezy all day. Late evening thunderstorms.

 Today's Hike:
Upper Goose Pond Cabin to Kay Woods Lean-To - 17.6 miles

Today was a day of trail magic. We started off our morning with pancakes and french pressed coffee thanks to Hal; the cabins caretaker. By 8:45am were headed north.

After a mile we came across trail magic bucket #1; soda's and little debbies thanks to Gimpy (thru-hiker 2003). We sat for a quick snack, then tackled our biggest climb for the day; 600 feet. Not to shabby.
Trail magic #2 occurred shortly after our late lunch when we arrived at the "cookie lady's" house. The cookie lady, Marilyn Wiley, bakes cookies for hikers during thru-hiker season and you can buy farm fresh hard boiled eggs for $2.50/dozen. We must have eaten a dozen cookies and a dozen hard boiled eggs between the five of us. By this time the overcast skies were being joined by ugly dark rain clouds so we took their arrival as our que to finish off our last 6.6 miles.

Three miles into our final stretch we reached trail magic #3, also sodas, Gatorade, and snacks. This time it was from Birch, a section hiker from this year who was paying it forward. By this time rain was starting to roll in so we all took one for the road and raced the last 3.7 miles to the shelter.
We made it to camp by 7pm, got the tent up, and ate dinner before the rain came. Right now it's 9pm, and the wind is howling, but no rain yet. I know it's coming, a front like this passing over without dumping on us would be the best trail magic to ever occur, and we don't think we'll be that lucky. Hope we're not taking down the tent in the rain in the morning.