9-18-12

AT miles hiked today: 7.1
Total AT miles hiked: 1405.2
Miles to complete my thruhike: 779.0

1400 miles! We are sharing a room at Anton's On The Lake in Greenwood Lake,NY. This morning Rockin' Robin watched a branch fall onto the porch. It nearly broke the window she was looking out. We all had near misses with branches falling out of the trees in the storm and nearly hitting us. I took my first two blue blazes due to the weather. They both went around exposed rocks instead of over them and I feel like I made good choices. We were all slackpacking because Spackle drove our stuff to the hotel in garbage bags so we were able to carry mostly empty packs. That is a big benefit and especially helps with allowing hiking to feel good. I don't find myself to be much faster when slackpacking, but going up hills is easier and it's more fun overall with less weight on your back.

Anton came to shuttle us to town from the side of the road and then we walked to several stores to resupply. We should have started with CVS in the first place, because it had pretty much everything I needed, but instead it was the last store we visited. Resupply took up the whole afternoon and it began raining heavily again in the evening.

We heard about Taco night at Murphy's and another hiker introduced himself and offered us a ride to $2 tacos. We ate with some locals and had a great time. Back at the hotel we watched The Royal Tanenbaums. It was my first time watching it and I loved it. I also got my replacement water bladder from Geiggerig! Yay! They are a great company with a great product, which they stand behind. The only thing I think they could change is to add measuring marks for the water, so I did it myself. I measured water and made measurement marks for every half a liter on the bladder like my platypus has. It's very helpful in sterilizing my water, since I use Aqua Mira drops and need to know how much water I'm working with.

Rockin Robin decided to leave the trail earlier than she originally planned and told us tonight. She is homesick, but Eagle Eye and all of us convinced her to stay longer. I don't know how long she will stay, though.