On The Trail Again

Day 80

Peach Fuzz left us. Fittingly though. He had walked an additional 10 miles yesterday on our zero, so he was going to always be ahead of us. As I said before, he was significantly faster than us. Additionally he had a hard deadline of August 4th that he was determined to meet. In this moment, August 4th felt like a crazy date to finish by, so we mutually, without words, agreed to go our separate ways. We enjoyed hiking with Peach Fuzz these past days, and I can unequivocally say that he was the fastest hiker that I saw on trail.

We were dropped off at East B Hill road along with some other hikers and restarted our hike. It was in this moment that I realized that I didn’t have my watch on me anymore. I must have left it back at the hostel. Rather unfortunate because I relied on that watch for my dead reckoning skills. I suppose my phone would have to suffice.

Margarita and I were zooming this morning. The trail inclination was very gradual and to the trails credit we hadn’t hit any real climbs yet. The climb up Wyman was one of the easiest we had experienced in a while. And after this climb, we stopped at the Hall Mountain Lean-to to refill on water. It was here that we ran into some SOBO hikers. Still feeling a little nervous for what Maine had in store for us, we asked them how the next climbs would be. SOBO hiker Moose Boots told us not to worry and that the rest of climbs for the day would be easyThank goodness! We deserve this.

Now motivated to tackle these easy miles, Margarita and I started again. We descended down to the road and immediately began the climb to Moody Mountain. The trail didn’t seem to get easy, or easy as described by Moose Boots. But we trusted her judgement, and we assumed that the trail would throw us a bone soon (we started saying the word “bone” when a section of the trail was easy. I.E “what do you think of Maryland? Total bone!” Or “this trail is a bone.” We had now adopted and redefined a word.).

Spoiler alert: the trail didn’t get any easier. We trudged up the mountains of Moody and Old Blue, all while cursing the false trail beta from Moose Boots. When we got to the top of Old Blue, I jokingly told Margarita that Moose Boots is lucky that our paths wouldn’t cross again or else hell would be raged. We had lunch on the woody summit of Old Blue and laughed at how “freakin sick” the partial view was.

We were making good time for the day, so we weren’t in too much of a rush. But we were in a nice little groove, and we were zooming down the trail. And after miles of monotonous trail, we were rewarded with the fresh smell of hotdogs and hamburgers at Bemis Mtn road. Glorious trail magic awaited us! When we got to the road, hikers rested upon chairs talking to trail angels as they sipped Maine’s famous Moxie sodas. Margarita and I sat down together and really put our feet up. It had been a long day and a burger and a Moxie sounded heavenly. The chief trail angel, the Meatman, shared stories of his frequent excursions to Montreal with his friends while we munched on our food. This was yet again another memorable trail magic moment (memorable because of the meatman and his buddies who told stories of their younger days).

At some point, we decided it was time to leave. We signed the logbook (I actually forged Margarita’s signature), said our goodbyes, and started back on the trail. After a little baby climb, we got to a highway. More trail magic awaited us here as two unopened sodas were sitting on a little bench at an overlook of Lake Mooselookmeguntic (look it up). We packed those suckers out to save them for dinner. Eventually we got to where we wanted to go to: Sabbath Day Pond Shelter. We found a nice little campsite away from the shelter and began our preparations for bed. Margarita tried cold soaking a knorr rice side and failed miserably. She said she got the idea from a man named Garbage. Lesson learned today: if a man named Garbage gives you cooking advice, you probably shouldn’t take it. I will abstain from talking about how we stored this over night.

#coldsoaklife

Long day. We were tired. Luckily we had the beautiful sounds of Loons to bring us to slumber. To anyone not accustomed to the noise I will provide a link to them below. And I was joking. Loons make terrifying noises, and I question psychological stability of anyone who finds their calls soothing (just a joke).

Please watch/listen to this video and imagine trying to sleep in your tent in the middle of the Maine wilderness.

Miles: 27.1

Sabbath Day Pond Shelter

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