Dress Up

I think this is unique to thru hiking. When you get into town and do your laundry, the inn or laundry mat will have loaner clothes for you to wear while you are scrubbing up your gear. At most, thru hikers carry only two sets of clothes and they are both beyond gross by the time you get into town so you want to make sure everything gets washed. Also, loaner clothes is a great chance to play dress up. You can wear women’s clothes, tacky clothes, loud things – whatever you want. Just remember that this will also be your outfit for your trip into town so you better be able to pull it off in the grocery store and BBQ joint.

I went with this great UT sweatshirt that will make my Aunt Barbara and my cousin Cindy proud. Nasty found these awesome purple polyester pants with mesh pockets sewn into the calves. He paired that with a Dr Pepper t-shirt and was ready to hit the town. We are in Monson – the last Trail town before the 100 mile wilderness and home to the famous Shaw’s Hiker Inn. These people really have it all. They have a gear shop and resupply store right here and three beautiful happy dogs running around so you can get your “best friend” fix. They are also going to do a food drop for us half way through the wilderness so we don’t have to carry five days worth. My favorite is the music room on the first floor. They have a piano, guitars, a sitar and drum sets that we messed around on.

Monson has a great BBQ place down the street. The owner loves hikers and the food is fantastic and huge. We loaded up on Mac n Cheese, BBQ and hot cornbread with tons of butter and scarfed it down on the front porch before going back for ice cream. Three hours later – we were back for more! I only have a few more days to eat like this and I’m making the most of it.

I don’t have a lot of hiking pictures today. It was pouring rain throughout our 18 miles into town as we hiked on a pretty flat course along a river. There were a ton of blown down trees that took a lot of extra time to navigate through but it was fun. We even had a waist deep river to ford that was fun and refreshing. The mosquitoes were loving all this rain and were out in full force. I picked up some 100% deet at Shaw’s to get me through the wilderness. I am bringing out the professional grade stuff for the last push. I’ll leave you with a short hiking video that I took the other day. I may not have cell service for the next few days but I’ll blog for sure if I do.