Stratton, Maine. I havent hit the 100-mile wilderness yet, but Im getting there. 188.2 miles remaining. Tomorrow I will hit the 2,000-mile mark and climb my last three 4,000-foot mountains until I get to the very last one, mighty Katahdin. Why do the weather people have to be right when they predict 5 days of rain?? Why cant they be right, instead, when they say things like sunny in the 60s and 70s, as they have predicted for the next 5 days? Please? Be right again. My tent is hanging up right now, drying and dedirtifying. Everything else is laid out to dry, as well. Hope it does by the time I have to pack it all up again for schlepping in the morning. I bought lots of snack food this time, hoping to nip that bonking thing in the bud once and for all. I actually tried to trade real breakfast food for gorp or any trail snack the other morning, but no one had any extra food ... which was a shame, because I made an exceptionally good breakfast--french toast, made with Pepperidge Farm raisin cinnamon swirl bread, topped with butter, brown sugar, and more cinnamon, with a side of bacon. I really enjoyed that! For this next leg, Ill have for lunch two different kinds of trail mix, raisins, hard boiled eggs, yogurt, carrot sticks, sausage and cheese, and blueberry muffins. Gosh, I hope it works. Bonking every two hours like clockwork is not fun, and its already gotten very old. So far Maine has been wild. And by Wild, I mean unkempt, untamed, difficult, raw. Not really a compliment. Its like the trail planners picked a point A and a point B, drew a straight line between them, and called it a Trail. They made little to no additional effort to place rocks for footing, trim back surrounding vegetation, moderate the grades with switchbacking, or any of the other tools trails generally employ to make them pleasantly walkable. If theres a river along the way, well youre on your own for getting across it. Bridges seem to be against the Maine state religion. They call it Fording; I call it Insanity. Its only a matter of time before I slip on some river slimy rock and go down with my pack and all its newly soggy contents. I have triple-ziplock-bagged my phone, but still have little faith it will survive such a dunking. Plus, that makes it completely inaccessible should I need to quickdraw the camera function for, say, a moose sighting! Oh how I wish to see a moose. General trail wisdom says you must be up very early to see them; theyre most active around dawn. Which means I probably wont see one :(. Decided at the last minute to stay in town with a hiker I met on the trail a few days ago and then again today at lunch. Then we got invited to one of the locals houses for dinner, where I met up with two other hikers I hadnt seen since Tennessee and Pennsylvania, respectively. It rained some more, when it was supposed to have stopped this morning. (I would have been on the trail for that surprise dunking if I hadnt stayed here, and I would not have been a happy camper.). So great day overall. Breakfast in the morning then back to the trail.
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 03:38:33 +0000
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