Our First Encounter with an Animal that could Legitimately Kill Us (Black Bears Don't Count)

7-9-09 day 37
start: Stewart Hollow Lean-To, CT
end: Lime Rock Lean-To, CT
daily mileage: 22.3
total mileage: 472.4

Another long day, over 22 miles! We were having a bit of trouble with the long days, so yesterday we bought a big box of cheerios to snack on as we hiked. It really helps to have something to munch on - otherwise, we're finding that we just think about food all the time (which really makes it less fun!) The other brilliant food buy from yesterday was a few boxes of dehydrated potatoes. We're having hot lunches and dinners every day now, and adding dehydrated potatoes to both meals made them SO much more filling! It's a super cheap way to enhance our diet!

I was hiking a little behind Sea Monster and was listening to The Count of Monte Cristo on my Kindle (I just now started trying audiobooks on the Kindle while hiking) and suddenly, I hear a loud noise through the headphones! Sea Monster is up ahead, just behind a huge rattlesnake, right on the trail! It was SO loud, and was rattling constantly. Apparently he had been startled by it from 20 feet away as well it was so loud! We enjoyed getting a pretty up-close look at it before it slithered away.

Towards the end of the day we had to follow a several-mile long AT Detour. Apparently one of the bridges it goes over was out, so they had us hiking along a road for four miles. It was an awful road hike - made worse by the copious amounts of McDonald's trash left all over, making us wish we had some Mickey D's! When we finally got into the shelter that night, we were disappointed to find "No Name" there... he'd evidently hitched about half of the hike, so we got to put up with him for another night. Ah well - I guess we were bound to meet some odd folks out here.

We were amused to find a group of Boy Scouts also there playing cards. Sea Monster was eating a bag of Fritos, and a leader asked if it was OK to eat junk food on the trail. We replied by informing him that we'd eaten a box of powdered donuts for breakfast that morning...