Eventful day

Day 26

Hiked today: 18.0
Hiked total: 397.0
To katahdin: 1781.3

Last night was a scary night. At 12:34am we both woke to a loud crash. We had no clue what it was, but getting woken up by a crash scared me. Of course I start thinking of the worst possible scenario and my mind starts playing tricks on me and I can't sleep. The wind was so powerful that it kept knocking the rocks off the tarp which was making more loud bangs. At one point I feel the tent shake and my heart stops. Is this war barn haunted? Is there a mountain lion walking around? A bear? I think its all in my half awake consciousness. I couldn't sleep. The only way to sleep was to listen to music. Every hour when it ended a loind bang would come from outside and I would have to start it over. So I got little sleep. Finally it was time to get out and are what made all that noise; it was just the wind blowing rocks and stuff around. I felt foolish, but last time I was woken up by a loind crash my high school roomate was having a seizure!

Anyway, we get going on the right path out. We laugh to see it takes is 2 minutes to get to the trail opposed to yesterdays hour. It was pretty cool because we followed a ridge for a while and could see the trail ahead. On one side p the Rodge were dark scary looking clouds, and on the other, sun. We prepared for rain anyway, and luckily it didn't come.

Since we didn't fill up our waters last night, we had to wait to find a source on the trail. I'm dying of thirst about a mile into it when we finally hit a stream. Andy was fine with no water. Actually we decided to change his name from Tellico to Camel - due to the fact he can go an entire day off of one liter of water while p drink 4. We start filling up our waters at the stream through our drinking tubes. We can pump straight into our platypus without taking it out of our bags. Andy fills his up and I start pumping. After about a liter, I look up at Andy and ask why my backs wet. I didn't attach the hose to the bladder. I pumped nearly a liter of water into my pack. Luckily, most of my stuff is in water proof bags anyway. It still wasn't fun.

We have our waters filled up and continued. We were on the balds for a while and off in the distance we are a double rotar helicopter. We continue walking on, and soon we see it coming towards us. Then, it passes right over us! It goes over the hill and we start walking again. We then notice it touched down in the MIDDLE of the trail ahead. We basically run towards it and get to it. We took some pictures and then the door opens up and this army hit steps out telling us to be careful near it. We take some pictures with him and step aside to watch it take off. The wind was crazy! It was definitely the coolest thing yet. We thought they mights give us some MREs but to no avail. We keep going and the army chopper keeps practicing.

We get down the mountain and actually got lost. We ended up coming out on someones property with this big black pitbull barking at us. Luckily I had the GPS on my phone and we could get to the road we were going to cross. We asked this old couple where the nearest food was and they were nice enough to give us a ride to a diner a mile away. We stuff our faces and then decide to walk on the road to a gap on the trail instead of trying to find the trail again.

So we walked up the road and met some cool dogs - some not so cool as well. It was hot out which felt amazing. Andy wasn't even wearing a shirt. We get to the trail and hike the 1.6 miles in half an hour and get to the shelter, which is the nicest shelter we she been I yet. We met a south bound hiker at the shelter and talked with him for a while and then went in the tent. Overall a really good day.

via BB