Picking up from Bruce Duffy’s tale of ‘not so desirable weather’, Viking, Dipper, Dunker and myself the newly name Low Maintenance, (Maureen McLaughlin) began our little night hike to the summit of Mt. Lafayette around 7:30 pm.

It was a dark and stormy night, well, not that stormy, but the weather did present of few challenges for our group. About an hour into our journey, Dunker fell ill with "gut rot" complements of America finest, McD’s. Dunker built himself a little flop house for the night and bedded down for the night - we pushed onward and upward towards the summit.

Around 9:00 pm we decided that assistance of light might now be a good thing since we could no longer see where the hell we were going. This was the perfect time for Dipper to play with his toy,(which is in no reference to the song " I don’t want no short _ _ _ _ man")his toy- a newly acquired light from one of the boy toy shops we had stopped at along our merry way, shone as bright as Rudolph’s red nose.

Out of the fog appeared Greenleaf around 9:45 pm or so. The Hut Master and his side kicks, were amazed with our journey, or were they amazed how stupid we were, never the less after a little small talk lead by Viking we filled our water bottles and continued our trip to the summit.

The fog was very thick now and it was hard to spot the trail to see the least, however our spidie senses guided us to the old foundation that I had only seen via the internet. What a sight! The Hut Master had informed us that we were not allowed to camp at the summit, so we did as he instructed and "sat around and talked" around 11:30 pm.

By 6:00am we were finished our conversation, and breakfast, with no thanks to the promised support of Dunker’s stove we packed up our gear and headed on one of the greatest adventures of my life. Shortly into our hike we were joined by Scrounger, bum bag and all.

During the next nine hours or so we traveled south, I think - Dippers compass was to small to see, to Lincoln, Little Haystack, Liberty (where Scrounger gained his new name by consuming all our food and drink) and Flume, then back to Liberty and down the Liberty Spring Trail.

Along the way Viking wooed several French Canadians with his linguistic talents and we met a few through hikers, who shared their adventures with us. Lucky for them Scrounger had not yet eaten us out of house and home - so they need not share their provisions.

During the last hour of our hike, Dipper broke away from the pack and went to find a swimming’ hole, and with his swimming record still standing we made our way to the bottom of the trail where we linked up with the bike trail to make the 3 mile long walk back to the car.

There we rejoined the others around 4:00pm, grabbed a hot shower and stuffed ourselves into the Gonzo mobile to speed up the leg cramping I’m still feeling today, and headed for Bangor.

Other than the usual stops for food and to pick up roadkill, yes, that’s right roadkill for a hat Viking will wear as a trophy some day it was your typical trip home.

I can’t wait for the next trip!!

Low Maintenance