We were up and on the trail bright and early this morning. A day where we head into town usually gets us moving pretty quickly.
The initial climb up Wyman Mountain wasn’t really too rough. There were a few annoying parts where the trail kind of snaked up and down across the slope of the mountain, but we covered 4 miles in about 1.5 hours. The hard part of the hike was the descent into and subsequent climb out of Sawyer Notch up to Moody Mountain. All parts of this section were steep, a few parts required rebar handholds and ladders. We were drenched in sweat by the time we reached South Arm Road. We made good time though, even with legs of rubber we got to the trailhead by 11am.
It didn’t take long for a hitch into Andover, the second car that came down the road stopped for us. They were very nice folks, and even gave us an apple to enjoy on the ride into town. They dropped us off right at Pine Ellis, the hostel that we’re spending the night in. It’s a nice little place, basically just a house that the owners put a bunch of beds in and let hikers come stay with them. They’ve got laundry and a shower, and we’ll get brought back to the trail in the morning.
Andover is a very small town with two small stores, a bakery/ restaurant, and an ice cream shop. We went to the bakery, called the Red Hen, for lunch. The food was so good. We split an order of pancakes, and I of course ordered the Reuben. It’s too bad they weren’t open for dinner, and they’re unfortunately closed on Mondays, otherwise we’d probably get breakfast there in the morning. We also happened to hit the ice cream shop, Kate’s Cones, on its last day open for this season. That being the case they were a bit limited on flavors. It didn’t matter though, we found a few that we’d enjoy, and it was really good. I feel bad for the other thru-hikers that will stop in town and miss out on this place.
We’re happy to be inside tonight as it’s currently raining with thunder and lightning outside. The next few days are looking like good weather, so it looks like we made a good choice for a town night. We’ll be back at it tomorrow… only about 2.5 weeks to go.
