Almost to Maine...CRAZY

(Phone Message Transcribed by Bethany)

Good morning! It’s about 10 am on Tuesday, September 4, 2007. Lauren and I spent the last couple of nights at our friend Ping’s "hut" in Gorham, NH. She and her husband, Barry, treated us like royalty, so it was fun to be there for a couple of days!

As I had mentioned before, we did trail work yesterday in the Mahoosucs. Today we are going to be headed out of town and we hope to cover about 10-12 miles. Tomorrow, Wednesday, we plan to meet up with another trail crew and do another day of work on the trail. Probably by Wednesday evening, we will cross the state line into Maine and camp just east of the border.

Lauren and I are feeling strong. We’ve got just about 300 miles left to go! The only thing that I can think to mention related to physical condition is that Lauren took a hard fall a couple of days ago and has some tender ribs, so we’re just keeping an eye on that and I’m trying to carry a little extra weight.

Other than that, it’s a gorgeous day here. We woke up with cloudy skies and everything blew off to the east so it’s nice and clear. I expect that we’re going to have quite a good stretch of sunny weather, crisp and cool, but gorgeous.

When I hit the top of Gorham Route 2, I got goose bumps thinking about how we’re almost finished, and I got a foreshadowing of what it might feel like to summit Khatadin, Maine. We understand that we have a very rugged and scenic stretch ahead of us, but we’re having an awesome time.

That’s it for now. Over and Out.