Day 16
Starting location: Millbrook Road
Ending location: Brink Shelter
Mileage today: 11.1 miles
Total Mileage: 174.4 miles
Today’s Photo

The story behind this photo ...
So today we woke up at our usual 7 am and got on the road by 8 am and on the trail around 8:30 am. Hindsight, we should have started earlier, since it got up to 95 degrees today. We thought we would have a nice easy 11.1 miles but we were so wrong! Man with full packs and the heat and the hills, we limped in to the shelter around 3:30 pm desperate for water! There wasn’t much on the trail today.


We did go past this pond and saw a couple beaver homes in it, which was cool. This was super early in the day so we didn’t need any of this water. Lol. Not that we wanted it anyway. lol.
We did see another large black rat snake that Bombadil nearly stepped on. It scared him so bad. lol. But he recovered pretty quickly. It was so cool to see it slither away.

Now this is the trail we want to see. See how smooth it is and free of rocks and roots! Pristine! You can actually look around and enjoy yourself.

Since I could look around, I found this gem of a plant. It’s is a pink lady slipper orchid. So beautiful.

At lunch we finally found a stream to refill our water bottles and refuel. There were tons of frogs in the stream. Unfortunately it wasn’t super nice to play much in despite the heat of the day.

Near the end of the day, NJ felt more like Georgia because we actually went up and down 3 different small mountains. PUDs are what we call them ( pointless up and downs). But this pic is at the top of rattlesnake mountain. Unfortunately we didn’t see any rattlesnakes.

Finally made it to Brink Shelter and the boys got right to “school” and did their journals and nature journals. (Bombadil wasn’t super excited).
We ate and around 6:30 pm a NOBO thru hiker came into camp. Sir Isaac Newton who started Feb 27th joined us tonight. He is British. Wonderful accent.
Well going to bed early tonight to wake up early to get 15 miles in before the heat gets bad. Trying for 6:30 am departure.
Good night.
Gandalf, Legolas & Bombadil
























