June 19 Kid Gore Shelter, VT to USFS Road 71, VT 6.1 Miles then home

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The rain stopped just before dawn. We were concerned about our ability to cross the stream between us and the trail. All the rain in the past few days has caused all the water levels to rise. Looks like we will have the morning to get out before the rain starts again. The plan is to walk out to the next road and get picked up about 3:30 and get taken to Manchester Center where we will get picked up by CC's brother Steve. No one is in a hurry to get out of the shelter. No need to hurry up and walk to a road and stand there for a few hours waiting on a ride. Not when we can sit in comfort in the shelter.

CC and I headed out first about 9AM. We wanted to just get the walk done and not be walking with the whole herd of four more people. The walking was much better today than yesterday. Again seems we made the right call stopping when we did. Everyone who had stayed with us the night before had planned to stay at Kid Gore. They all pushed on the 4.6 miles to the Story Spring Shelter. Walking north we passed seven hikers headed south. The three people walking north plus these folks made ten people at the shelter. Arriving there for a short snack break we saw there was only room for six in the shelter and no real tent sites close. I bet it was a long wet night for somebody. It took 45 minutes for the rest of our group to catch us. They had been unable to contact the shuttle guy today as of yet. Time to shift to alternate plan "C-5-b." One thing the military instilled in me is to always have a backup plan. Having no phone service there CC and I headed out, still no rain and praying it stayed that way.

Upon reaching the USFS road I saw it was near 1PM, when Steve said he would be getting into Manchester. I took a chance and checked for phone service. There was enough to make the call. Steve was within one hour of our position. The road was a very good gravel one and I had no problem with my car being driven on the thing. I told him where we were and he headed our way. Being a truck driver too he is used to looking for hard to locate places. He stopped where there was a VT State trooper to ask for assistance locating us. The next phone call was almost comical. Seems the road we walked out to had changed names and there was some work to figure out just where we were. Long story cut short, after an hour we saw our car coming up the road as the rain was starting up.

The ride home was uneventful and the closer we got to home the better the weather became. The four others called us to find out where we were, as they were standing at the pickup point and we weren't. After a short explanation all was well with the world.

We will take a few days off refitting and drying everything out. Our plan is to return to the trail with both our vehicles to support ourselves. We will leapfrog the vehicles as we walk. It took some time to get the system figured out where the driving would be minimized. We will drive all the way to Baxter State Park and drop one vehicle there. Drive back to Monson, ME where we will park the second one. Then we will walk north back to Baxter to fetch the car there. We will then drive south and repeat the same thing until we make it back to our jump off point in VT. This will give us the ability to cut down how much food we have to carry and can tailor our other gear more. After doing the 100 mile wilderness in Maine, we will be able to cut our resupply time to 2-3 days not 5-7. This will lighten up our packs and allow us to move faster and further each day. We can also slack pack some places and do those 20+ mile days without real packs. This should cut down the number of days it will take to finish by 10. We will let everyone know when we are headed back which should be no later than the 28th.

Patrick, Deborah Mooney aka OD & CC
All Who Wander Are Not Lost

For Photos and Video: http://odandccslongwalk.shutterfly.com/

OD and CC have been marking their path with a GPS using SPOT Satellite Messenger and can be tracked at the following link. It keeps track of their last 7 days: http://tinyurl.com/o2g53z

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