START TIME: 6:10 AM 
END TIME: 9:10 PM
Three big accomplishments today. First, Jen made it through the Mahoosuc Range—not the tallest, but probably the toughest mountains on the trail. Second, she made it out of Maine, which means no more black flies! But the biggest accomplishment was just getting out of bed this morning. Her shins had been KILLING her when she got to Grafton Notch last night. I was really thinking she might not hike anymore. This morning, she woke up at 4 and her shins still killed. Then she woke up at 5 and they were still intensely painful. But then she woke up at 6 and decided to try to walk around a bit with the hiking pole. She said her shins felt a little better, so she decided to “woman up” and keep going. She tackled Mahoosuc Notch, the craziest mile on the trail, where she had to walk on all fours through a one-mile boulder field, at around 10:45. After she made it through that, she kept going and got to Gentian Pond around 4:30. She hiked down the trail outside of Gorham around 8:50 and I got to walk with her on the dirt road then the asphalt for about 2/3 of a mile.
There’s no telling how her shins will hold up on the rocky terrain of the Presidentials, which she’ll enter tomorrow. It hurt her to road walk on the asphalt this evening so I’m guessing it’ll be pretty painful to walk on the rocks, especially on the downhills. But she’s going to keep soldiering on until she her body tells her to stop. In the meantime, she’ll keep taking ibuprofen and icing her shins. Regardless, very few people have made it out of Maine in 7 days. I’m not a trail historian but my guess would be only two or three, if that. So that’s something to be proud of.
FOOD: She ate her usual, a banana and Clif Bar, for breakfast, a turkey, bacon, and avocado sandwich from Subway for a late afternoon lunch, and a Mountain House mac and cheese with chocolate milk for dinner. Her normal snacks include healthy stuff like Clif Bars, honey stingers, trail mix, mixed nuts, granola bars, healthier chips (tortilla chips and pretzels) and different kinds of cheese (mostly string cheese and hunks of cheddar cheese). The junk food includes candy bars, cookies, less healthy chips (Fritos, Combos, and Kettle Chips), marshmallows, donuts, brownies, gummies (especially Sour Patch Kids), and ice cream. Most of the time she drinks water, fruit juice mixed with water, or Gatorade. We don’t keep track of her caloric intake, but ideally she’ll be eating about 6,000 a day, or three times the normal amount for a woman. She tries to eat one snack every hour.
ANIMAL SIGHTINGS: Warren, Melissa, and I had to take about a 75-mile detour today because a logging road had been closed on the Maine-New Hampshire border. When we were about to reach New Hampshire, a giant moose hopped a guard rail and started running diagonally down the road in front of Warren’s car. Warren saw it in time and slammed on the brakes. There were some nice tire marks where he skidded to a stop. The moose didn’t seem too concerned. He just kept loping across the road and onto the bank on the far side. Melissa had been wanting a close encounter with a moose, but I don’t think she pictured it that way.