Day 93 - Tom Leonard Shelter (July 10)

I did 20 miles to get to the Tom Leonard shelter. I crossed the 1,500 mile mark in the morning. I met RJ at the ice cream store on RT 7. We camped together a couple days ago. He was hiking with ATV who is a section hiker. Also here is a group of high school kids who volunteered to do a week of trail maintenance. They said they signed up online. I don't think any are local.

The trail to the shelter was poorly marked. There were many places the trail split into two or more directions. These new trails would develop when people would walk in one direction for a while looking for a white blaze and establishing a new trail for others to mistakenly follow. Then they would turn around and take another trail until they finally found a white blaze. I did this several times myself. What makes it worse is there were so few white blazes, you had to go down these side trails quite a distance before you knew you were not on the trail. I always worried about finding my way back to the trail.

I find that I'm spending more than I did the first half of the trail. RJ thinks groceries are more expensive here. I was noticing that too. There are also fewer hostiles and motels are more expensive. I'm also eating at least three times what I would normally eat. I spent 15.50 dollars yesterday on ice cream and sodas, which was about 2,500 calories. That's probably not a bad price for that number of calories.