Campfire!

A day after I hiked out of Andover, where I stayed at the Pine Ellis Lodge, I was back in town. It was at noon on Aug. 31 when I hiked down from Moody Mountain to South Arm Road, a country back road, and found Nutmeg and Billyhoot camped out at a stealth site near a big creek and told them I was going to hitch into town for lunch and hitch back out.

Katchup and Grommet joined me and we got a ride from a man and his wife; he moved some flyfishing rods out of his truck bed before we got in. The plan was to get pizzas and beers and bring it all back.

I love it when a Monday goes askew, and suddenly the worst day of the week is totally unfamiliar, in a good way.

We ended up calling David, the manager of the Pine Ellis Lodge, for a shuttle back out because hitching just wasn't happening. In fact I finished my pizza, and a pint of ice cream, on the side of the road at the Andover General Store.















[Andover General Store and diner]

We got back and crossed the stream.














[Grommet and Katchup go into the wild with pizza, Aug. 31, 2009.]

Later on, Wis-pee and Blacklist showed up, and David from Pine Ellis took a break from work to come hang out with us. He busted a couple of jams on his flute and dropped a case of trail magic Budweiser.














[Wis-pee, David, Nutmeg, Billyhoot and Grommet, with the campfire.]

At some point, the idea of breakfast at the diner came up. It turned out that David had an appointment to drop a hiker off at the road at 8 a.m. the next morning. Our luck, he was willing to take us all into town if we showed up.

There was never any doubt about us showing up for breakfast.















[Andover diner, Sept. 1.]

We took over half the counter and the food was delish. I had a bacon cheese omelet with home fries and toast and a sundae for dessert.