Nice trail

We woke up to more rain and it was coming down pretty hard all morning. We were convinced to bail a bit early into town as we slogged over a couple mountains and then very steeply down to the road. Megan fell a couple times and so did the other guys… By the time we all got down everyone was very muddy and wet.

Fortunately, the shuttle to town was waiting for us after our rough descent, so we were quickly into town, showered and off for a late lunch.

DBB
Atlantic Coal Porter (Atlantic Brewing, Bar Harbor, Maine)
While in Andover, Maine, we had the option of eating at 1 of 2 spots in “town” – the Andover General Store, or the Mills General Store, next door. Not much else to this town, period. Both places had 1-topping pizza on sale! We got a veggie pizza to go and were able to buy these beers in singles. Took it all back to our hostel (along with a green pepper I called “salad” from the 8-item “veggie section”) and had dinner on the swinging seats on the front porch of our hostel. Not my favourite Porter but hit the spot, cold, paired well with pizza, and gets a solid rating for the convenience of being sold in singles!

We had a pretty smooth morning highlighted by meeting some new hikers – Dr. Banner and Rabbi. We hiked with them a bit, then met 3 more new hikers at lunch – Weird, Magic, and Web MD.  When we rolled up to the shelter for lunch they were just getting ready to start their day.  I guess we probably won’t see too much of them after the next couple days.

The late afternoon was a decent hike up part of Bemis Mountain, with nice views back the way we came and another beautiful sunny day. There’s talk of some sort of tropical storm rolling in over the next couple days, so hopefully we are in town by then!

We ended up all at the same shelter after 19.5 miles for us, along with our usual crew minus Fun Employed, who had to head into town for some reason…  Robin started a nice fire and everyone cooked and chatted for a good while. A couple northbounders showed up as well for a pretty full house.

It rained over night but stopped just as we were getting up.  Good thing too, as we had a lot of mountain to climb and the opportunity for nice views!  First we dropped way down to a “ford” that we were able to stay dry by rock hopping.  Then the climbing started, first up Saddleback Junior, then the Horn, which we had great 360 views from in the sun.   One of our first real vistas since the first day of the hike.

Find Ryley!

We then got to traverse a ridge to Saddleback Mountain, all above treeline,  ending with even better views.  We enjoyed the scenery on the way down until it was swallowed by the trees,  and a knee jarring descent into camp.  Once again shared with Robin and Funemployed, plus Vanilla Thunder and A-Town.  Vanilla is pretty creative with food – right now they have powdered peanut butter to add to Ramen,  plus parmesan.  They carry butter as well to add to everything (including coffee).  It’s always entertaining with this crew…

New, larger shoes and a much lighter tape job on my toes made a huge difference today.  Basically no pain left, fingers crossed!

We had breakfast and chatted with the hotel owner, Sue,  then she shuttled us up to the trail by 9:15.

3 mountains climbed, not much seen, but still a nice day of hiking, including a scramble up a ridge.  A bit of a short day but looking forward to more tomorrow.

I ate a giant burger, with sausage patty, bacon, etc

Today was basically a day off, with a nice 5 mile walk to the highway, where we were quickly picked up by Boomerang, a southbounder who was just getting back on trail, but offered to take us into town first.  We picked up Robin enroute as he was walking and hitching (with Vanilla Thunder and Seth).

We got all our chores done and had a few good meals and snacks:

DBB 3 Smashed Blueberry, Shipyard Brewing Co. Signature Series (Portland, ME)
Hybrid between a Porter and a Scotch Ale. “Notes of coffee and chocolate accentuated with the aroma of blueberries”. Fruity, but not too sweet. Oh and did I mention 9% alcohol? “Smashed Blueberry pairs well with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s The Tonight Dough ice cream”.

Exciting times for my feet,  Megan convinced me to take all the tape off and soak them in soapy water,  then left the tape off for the day.  We shall see tomorrow.

We ended the night watching an acapella reality TV show to fall asleep to.  A good day off!

Last night we were visited by a bunny that was really interested in the dead leaves right beside our heads.  Kept us up a bit til we got a good look at it and realized it was harmless.

Big day in the Bigelows!  We started with some warm up climbs around Flagstaff Pond, then climbed 4 peaks in succession.  A tough hiking day, and unfortunately it was in the rain so we didn’t get to see anything for our efforts.  But the tops of the mountains were otherworldly in misty clouds and rain.  We didn’t linger and quickly dropped down to Horn Pond to sleep, with an early exit to town planned for tomorrow.

Hillbilly Dan after dropping us off

We got up a bit early today, hiking before 7, in order to catch the “ferry” at 9, 6 miles down the trail.  It turns out that the ferry is just a guy named Hillbilly Dan and his canoe.  We were the first people there and he had us across the Kennebec River in no time.  This river is too big to ford and there isn’t a footbridge anywhere nearby, so the AT hires Dan to do the ferrying during hiking season, at this time of year that means from 9-11am

We climbed beside a river and stopped to check out some cool falls, then continued on upstream til we got to Pierce Pond.  The Pond is dammed with a wooden dam, and we had to walk right along the edge of it. We had an early lunch at the next shelter, looking out over the pond, and ran into Dreamweaver and Funemployed, who just stopped in for a quick snack. 

After lunch we kept cruising on good trail through boggy country, and we decided we could make it a total of 20 miles to the next shelter. Almost immediately, the trail got muddy and slow again, so our last 2 hours were non-stop rock and root hopping.

We rolled into the shelter with Vanilla Thunder and his son Seth and were soon joined by Dreamweaver and FE,  along with Robin, another guy we’ve seen a few times now, going back to Shaw’s in Monson.  Vanilla Thunder made a roaring fire and everyone dried out damp things while chatting.  A nice relaxing evening before we turned in rather early.

On top of Moxie Bald

We climbed a pretty real mountain this morning, Moxie Bald. Once we were in top we had a long break just watching the forested hills around us.  No bugs, nice temperature, very unusual for the AT so far 🙂

Next up was a long approach to another climb, Pleasant Pond Mountain. The bugs were out in force and tons of blow downs have us some troubles but we topped out in late afternoon and were quickly chased back down the other side by swarms of black flies.

At the bottom, Megan took a dip in Pleasant Pond, then we called an early day since we have to catch a ferry across the Kennebec River first thing tomorrow.

Quiet Earp and others jamming

We decided to head out in the morning after doing some grocery shopping, and listening to one last jam session by all the musically talented hikers.

Test crossing a river

The trail was smooth for about 12 miles, then we had two deep river fords, one well over my waist and the second running very fast.  So thoroughly soaked,  we soldiered on through some very wet trail until we arrived at a shelter.  Having seen no one on the trail all day, we found probably 15 people already set up and had to squeeze or tent into an awkward spot… One with a perfect view of the lake.  We watched the sunset over it while eating dinner  then collapsed into our tent, put to sleep by loon calls