Day 147 – Wednesday, August 3: Stealth Camp (West Branch of the Piscataquis River) to the Lake Shore House (Monson, ME), 12.0 miles, 2,074.6 total AT miles.

We woke up early and packed quickly. We didn’t want any of the hikers we passed last to catch up with us before we broke camp. After a quick breakfast, we were on the trail by 6:30am.

The trail into Monson was very rocky – and got rockier as we approached. The weather was nice at least – cool breezes and big, blue skies. We hoped to arrive in Monson by noon, but the trail had other plans. We finally spilled out into the trailhead parking lot at 1:30pm.

I called the hostel and asked if we could catch a ride. We were picked up fifteen minutes later and found ourselves checking in shortly after that. We both took showers and got our clothes into the laundry. We put on loaner clothes and headed to Shaw’s, a different hostel in town that maintained a hiker resupply shop.

Buying all those snacks and meals quickly added up – it was definitely one of my more expensive resupplies. Walked our purchases back to the hotel and put on clean clothes. It didn’t seem like there were many hikers staying at the Lake Shore – there were quite a few at Shaw’s. While Shaw’s had a small store and more of a community of hikers staying there, the Lake Shore had a restaurant on the first floor.

We walked downstairs and sat at the bar. The food was nice – and not too expensive. I ordered crab rangoons, chicken wings and a sandwich and fries. We ate quickly and ferociously. I headed to the convenience store to grab a few more snacks before turning in for the night.

We looked through the AT Guide at the elevation profiles for the days ahead. In order to summit Katahdin on the 9^th, we needed to cross through the Hundred Mile Wilderness in five days – that’s about 20 miles a day. The profile looked awfully flat in places, especially towards the end. We were very confident we could do it. We went to bed ready to enter the last big section on the AT.

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We still haven’t seen a moose. Everyone else has seen one, if not many. This really bothers Greyhound – she wants her moose bad. I told her we’d definitely see one in the HMW. I hope I’m right.