Hello from North Conway NH. Yet another unexpected stop on our journey, but a good one. For the last week or so we have been hiking through some of the best scenery on the trail in the White Mountains. It has been very tough going and the White Mountains are kicking our butts for a 3rd time, but the views have been outstanding.  We've slowed our mileage down to about 10 miles a day.  We have been fortunate enough to have close to no rain and good visibility each day.  We have now traveled 1
Since out last update we have had a setback. We hiked from Hanover towards the whites and got to the first peak in about a week, Mt Moosilauke, our 1st peak above treeline. We summited and got limited views because the clouds were constantly blowing in and out. The north side of the mountain was a notoriously steep descent so we passed the shelter to make it all the way down to the road at Kinsman Notch. At the time we were just trying to make a couple of more miles, but it turned out to be very beneficial to us the next morning. When we woke up Robin was having shooting pains in her neck and was having a lot of trouble doing much of anything. We knew that carrying a pack was out of the question, so we made our plan to go to town. I carried my pack and her pack out to the road (fortunately very close), and we called a local cab company to take us to the medical center. We arrived early and got an appointment for 10 am. We were fortunate to get in earlier due to a cancellation, so by 9am she had seen a doctor and gotten a steroid and muscle relaxer for her neck. There was an amazing hostel literally 2 blocks away so Sideways got to lay out before noon. We spent 3 days in the town of Lincoln letting her heal, and enjoyed the company of many hikers passing through the hostel. Chet, the owner of the hostel, has an amazing life story and we felt very privileged and inspired to have crossed paths with him. In 2001 when Chet was preparing for an AT thru-hike he had a camping stove accident when a fuel bottle exploded on him burning his lungs and body severely. After the accident he was in a coma for 8 months and expected to be on a ventilator and dialysis for the rest of his life. The burns also affected the nerves in his legs taking his ability to walk. It has taken nine years, but he is living on his own and beginning to be able to walk short distances on his own. His eye sight is also slowly coming back, and is otherwise in fairly good health. His kindness and hospitality to us was beyond what we would every expect from a stranger, and his story was extremely inspiring to us. He allowed us to stay in his home until she was completely ready to hike.
When we left Lincoln we were heading for the Kinsmans which were two difficult peaks in between the notches. It was only 20 mi but it took us two full days to hike to the next notch where we stealth camped for the night. We were very excited for the next day because we were going over Franconia Ridge (see pictures on facebook) and were supposed to have pretty good weather, which can be difficult to come by in the Whites. We had a beautiful day and both got pretty sun burnt. It was good to be back on the section because we had visited 5 years earlier. Fortunately this time we had much lighter packs and better hiking legs on us. The first time we visited was actually Robin's first backpacking trip and she was carrying about 50 pounds in a men's size large pack. She lost 4 toe nails that time. We were still beat this time, but were able to enjoy ourselves much more.  Many of you have probably heard about the meteor shower that peaked last week.  The night of the peak, we setup camp by a spot on Mt Webster called Webster Cliffs with a beautiful panoranic view.  We woke up at about 2:30am and watched the meteors in totally clear skies for 30 minutes, we saw about 20-30 meteors.  Since we have been in the whites, we have seen some amazing, really dark night skies and have been able to clearly see the milky way. 
We summitted Mt. Washington on Saturday, August 14th.  We got up to the top pretty early, around 10am, and it was pretty calm.  The weather was great, about 50 degrees with pretty calm wind at 5-10mph...it was pretty cloudy, but Mt Washington is known to have "the worst weather in the world", so we felt very fortunate.  Within the next couple of hours, hundreds of people were piling onto the summit via the cog railway and the auto road, and a few people who had hiked up.  It was like being in a shopping mall or an airport, and we posted up on the summit and people watched for several hours.  We were thinking of our good friends who were married on that day...congratulations to John and Maggie Guy and Jason and April Brown!!!!  We were wishing that we could have been in attendance at your weddings, but we had you in our thoughts and summitted Mt Washington to celebrate!
The bad thing about the Whites for thru hikers is that the AMC (Appalachian Mountain Club) runs and maintains most of the shelters, tentsites, and huts in the national forest. They do a good job on trail maintenance, but they charge at every site you can stay. The shelter and tent sites are 8 dollars a person and the huts are a wopping 90 dollars a person. They do give a "work for stay" option to AT hikers,  but that is up to the caretaker. At our first shelter we got to do some morning work which was fairly enjoyable. Sideways and I transplanted some fir trees from the forest into heavily impacted "illegal" tenting sights right next to the shelter. The work took less than an hour and we saved almost 20 dollars. We got to do work for stay at Zealand Falls and Lakes of the Clouds hut which involved cleaning bunk rooms, bathrooms, and washing dishes. We don't mind doing the work because we were typically fed pretty well for dinner and breakfast, and that means a lot on the trail. We were unfortunately turned away from Madison Hut at 6:30 at night. The walk after the hut was harder than we expected and ended up night hiking half of the way to the next tent site, getting into camp at 11pm. We were very irritated by the fact that they sent us on because it could have ended any one of our hikes due to the danger of the terrain-especially in the dark. Hiking at night is not that good of an idea in the first place especially when you are doing a 2000 ft descent in 1.5 mi. We only wanted to sleep on the floor of the hut, but the crew said they had to keep thru hiker numbers down. They also proceeded to tell us that if we each payed 12 dollars it would be OK  to stay. We knew the money would just be pocketed by the crew because that is definitely not a rule so we moved on. We found two days later that they allowed seven hikers to do work for stay after they sent us all away. We don't think it's right that they put us all in danger one night and totally changed the rules the next. We have a little bit of a problem with and club being able to have concessions and authority on public land, but that's how it is. Needless to say we are very happy to be moving out of their main territory and get away from the crowds at the huts.
After our night hike we hadn't gotten much sleep and were very tired. We got to Pinkam notch visitor center and were sort of bummed out because we were about to get our butts kicked on Wildcat mountain. A former thru-hiker and trail angel M&M approached us and asked if we would like to come shower and do laundry at her house in North Conway. It was a fairly easy decision since we hadn't showered in about 8 days. She has provided us with the majority of our food here and opened her home to us. We ended up zeroing because it was raining when we woke up and we were very comfortable here. Last night 15 hikers stayed which was the largest number she has ever hosted. Most of us are heading back to the trail today, but there are a couple more taking a rest. Robin has developed a cold or a sinus infection, so there is another obstacle for her. We're gonna take it slow, but hopefully she is going to recover soon.