Beautiful weather today. Antlers is a nice site and [Doodles and I] made breakfast by the lake in the warm sun. Unfortunately, breakfast was kind of a bust. We tried making rice pudding that we'd dehydrated and added apples and cranberries. Too much water, too much heat on the stove, and we had burnt, watery rice for breakfast. OH WELL. The hiking was pretty easy, relatively flat terrain, not much mud, a lot of bugs but we have our headnets and Deet and it was pretty tolerable. At one point we stopped for snacks and laid our mats right on the trail to lay down and rest. Perks of having closed-cell pads, we figured. We met a few hikers on the trail, more that we've seen yet. A NOBO thruhiker blew past us. Apparently he'll be #2 this year [#1 summitted Katahdin a couple of days before we even began]. A Brit, as it happens. We met Ben, a SOBO who was in the Air Force - and wearing his standard-issue boots, which he'll probably swap out soon. We stopped for lunch at Cooper Brook Shelter, and ran into another couple of Northbounders [one a creepy Irishman who I dubbed Sheepshagger]. I'm surprised at how early these guys are - they must have started in February or early March, and just cruised. They were smoking cigarettes, which I found amusing. We finished up the day with some more easy hiking, a knee-high ford of a stream off Crawford Pond, and made camp near the pond, near a little "beach" area that overlooks the water and reminded me a bit of Walden. We made a fire in a ring that was already here, so apparently this site is used for camping, though it's not an "official" site. Dinner was Ramen, and a dehydrated, curried-quinoa-chickpea-raisings thing I dehydrated a while back. Light rain on the tent, but it's stopped now, and we're turning in early. Elevation tomorrow, up to Little Boardman, but not too much, and then next day on to the big peaks. -Ups
11 miles - sunny & warm
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