Days 150 + 151
Day 150: Mile 1528.1 | Tom Leonard Shelter
We were up at 9am again and out by 10am. I took our clothes over to a local motel who kindly let us use their laundry machines. The laundromat was on the other side of town... Miles went over to the AT&T store to finish getting his new phone. I sat in the parking lot of the motel and ate my breakfast while I waited for the machines to be free. I dried some of my wet gear on the paved parking lot and utilized the free wifi to download some new podcasts. While I waited for the laundry I did some research. I needed to get to the post office where my new foam sleeping pad was waiting for me. It was more than 3 miles away. I really didn't want to walk an extra 3 miles. I found a public bus that was going over there every couple of hours and decided that's what I wanted to do. I finished the laundry, sorted it, and walked over to the plaza with the grocery store. I met Miles there and we caught the bus to the post office.
We both got packages there. After we picked them up we stopped at a coffee shop. We finished charging our phones and batteries while using the wifi. I got some blogging done and ate an apple turnover. I called Joe, our ride from the day before, and he agreed to take us back to the trail at noon. We finished packing up our stuff and went to meet him at the town hall.
The day shaped up to be absolutely beautiful, albeit hot. I made arrangements with my aunt over the phone on our way out of town. We were to meet her the day after tomorrow in Lee, MA! The hike out of town wasn't too bad. We hiked to the closest shelter to town, about 6 miles in. It turned out to be very crowded. I hadn't seen so many people at a shelter since Shenandoah. Miles and I found two tent sites side by side. All of the tents were close together. I set up my tent and slept on my new foam sleeping pad. It was, honestly, so nice not to have to blow up a sleeping pad. I made dinner, a failed experiment using McCormack spice packet and Minute Rice. I choked down my icky over-spiced rice and topped it with a sausage.
Miles and I went to bed early and vowed (like we'd done many times before) to get up before 9am the next day. Exhausted, I tried to ignore the snoring men in the tents around me with very little success. Around 3am I felt like I was about to fall asleep when I heard a loud banging noise coming from the shelter. No one had decided to camp inside the shelter on this night. We were all in tents to avoid the mosquitoes. I peeked outside with my red light on my headlamp. I shone it over to the shelter behind my tent. What looked like a big, dark blob was chewing on the edge of the shelter floor. I realized the sound wasn't so much a banging as a loud scraping.
I switched my headlamp to the white light and saw that it was a porcupine! A huge porcupine was eating the freaking shelter! At 3 am! I found a big stick near my tent and tossed it at the shelter. It hit the shelter and a scared porcupine retreated into the dark woods. I laid back down. Five minutes later the noise resumed. I gave up. I put in headphones and listened to some classical music until I fell asleep.
Day 151: Mile 1535.2 | North Mt. Wilcox Shelter
We left camp late in the morning by thru-hiker standards, as usual. It was a beautiful day and the sun was already shining. We packed up and ate breakfast on the go. The trail was pretty easy this day. We sped through the ups and downs of the Massachusetts woods and after about five miles we decided to break for lunch.
As we walked Miles observed, "We've been walking together for a long time now." I agreed. We starting wondering just how many miles we had actually covered together and decided to look it up in my journal when we decided to break for lunch. "I think it's been like a thousand miles by now!" he said. Under some powerlines we found a nice grassy spot to eat. We had some cherries I packed out from town and a few energy bars while I dug out my journal to look back at when we started walking together.
Marion, VA we had joined up. Mile 533.3 exactly. I looked at Guthook to check what mile we were at now. 1,533.3 exactly was where we sat under the power lines. Miles' spooky suspicion was perfectly correct! He swore he didn't look it up beforehand. We happily took a commemorative photo and packed up our food bags to mosey on. As we walked someone stopped us on trail. He said, "Welcome to New England! Have a Whoopie Pie!" and handed us a couple of whoopie pies in passing! Massachusetts was proving to be very generous! Miles had never had a Whoopie Pie!
At the bottom of a hill we came to a bend in the trail that followed the edge of a small beaver pond. We stood looking out at the beaver dams for a moment before continuing on. As I turned to follow Miles, I felt a painful burning sensation in my knee. Really painful, but more of a surface pain. I cried out "OW! OW! OW!" Miles turned around in panic, "What happened?!" I looked down at my knee to find that the problem was a bee! I got stung by a bee! I hadn't been stung by a bee since I was a small child. It was much more painful than I remembered.
The bee had, of course, died in the process of stinging me and was now just hanging by its stinger from my knee cap. I brushed it off with the tip of my trekking pole and ran up the trail to catch up to Miles near the other edge of the beaver pond. A weird numbing sensation began to spread up my leg and through my body but the burn was still there. Miles tried to get me to sit down but I was too afraid there might be more bees nearby so we hurried up the trail, away from the pond. I found a large rock by the trail to sit on and took some deep breaths.
I looked up at Miles from the rock. "Where's your toothpaste?" I asked him. He was constantly brushing his teeth. Three times a day every day. So I knew his toothpaste was probably more easily accessible than mine. He got it out of his fanny pack and handed it to me.
"Why do you need toothpaste?" He asked, puzzled. I opened the tube and spread the sticky white paste over the swollen sting zone. "The baking soda in the paste will help dry up the zone. The mint soothes the burning and reduces swelling. Once the paste dries the stinger will brush right out." Miles was surprised. "How do you know this?" He followed up. "Well," I explained, "I actually learned this as a kid when I got stung for the first time. But, I also took a wilderness first aid course." We sat for a few minutes and waited for the paste to dry a little bit. I left it on the sting and we kept hiking.
The pain didn't subside. It burned for a few hours. Somewhere after this we crossed a dirt road near a farm. A lovely roadside stand for hikers was there. They had hard boiled eggs, cold Gatorade, a few dry goods resupply items, chips, fruit, and some other drinks. I left a couple of dollars and got a Gatorade. We saw Snow Angel there, too! She told us about her awesome week in New York City! It's amazing how quickly she caught up to us!
After the Gatorade we walked through the farm fields and passed another farm. We headed up and over Mt. Wilcox, relatively uneventfully and with no view, and stopped at a shelter on the northern side of the mountain to camp. We were about 16 miles from Lee, MA, where we would meet my aunt the next day. We planned to get up early in the morning and meet my aunt around 5 or 6 in the evening.
At camp I set up my tent and blew up my sleeping pad. Inside I used a baby wipe to clean off the tooth paste. The stinger was no longer in my knee but the burning pain was still there. Miles got water for me so that I wouldn't have to walk too much. We ate dinner together and went to bed early.
