I just read a posting by attroll on Whiteblaze.net that said Pagleg, the manager of the Andover Guest House recently passed away.
I stayed at the Andover Guest House in 2003, and for me it was the best of the “commercial hostels” that I experienced along the AT.
I was hiking with Blaze at the time and we had had a fairly tough few days before getting to East B Hill Road. We hit East B Hill Road mid morning with the intention of hitching a ride into Andover for a well earned break.
It was stinking hot and after about 45 minutes only a handfull of cars had passed and the drivers didn’t want to see us. And then along came Pegleg (Richard) in his van on what we found out was a daily shuttle run to pick up hikers. Without any strings he offered us an ice cold Coke and a lift into town. What a life-saver he was to us!
As it turned out I liked the Andover Hotel so much I stayed there for 3 nights, getting Pegleg to shuttle me out to the trail each day.
The thing I liked about the place was that it was so clean and comfortable, lots of room to lounge about and nothing was too much trouble for Sandra and Pegleg.
My condolences go to Sandra and Richard’s family.
One of my favourite AT hike photos is one of Pegleg with me with Lake Mooselookmeguntic in the background when he dropped me off at the trail (the photo can be seen on my website at the link below
http://www.geocities.com/davidburville/roll7a.html )
Pegleg was such a good hearted soul at the time he dropped me off at the tril to continue my hike Restless just happened to climb out of the scrub to cross the road, and without a second thought Pegleg handed her an ice cold Coke.
Pegleg will be sorely missed by the AT hiking community. I do hope they can manage to keep the Andover Hotel open.
Downunda