Mountains Under Foot

From Hazard’s notes:
Day 116: September 2, 2009
Travel:
From: Moxie Bald Lean-to, ME
To: ME 15; Monson, ME
Beginning: 8:00am
Ending: 2:15pm
Number of miles hiked:
a) Trail – 17.9
b) other -
c) AT Mile Marker – 2063.7 cumulative
Weather:
AM & PM: Beautiful day again, perfect weather.
People: Rebekah, Flying Scotsman, Spicoli and crew, Hobbit.
Animals:
Money: $4 shuttle, $4 fuel at outfitter, $45 resupply, $35 for room, $10 dinner, $2 laundry.  $2134 cumulative.
Notes of the day:
AM:  A typical morning with Nick being super pumped and ready to get moving way before anyone else wanted to hike.  We trickled out of camp one by one and I took a stop in the privy on the way out which put me quite a ways behind Crocstar.  Once I got moving down the trail I hiked around Bald Mountain Pond where we stayed the night and then I had to negotiate a stream ford which was surprisingly not featured in the guidebook.  The water was at least deep enough to swallow your boot and fast enough to possibly throw you off balance.  Hikers and maintainers before us had created a path with rocks and limbs to keep our boots dry and tied a rope that spanned the stream crossing so we could keep our balance.  After a quick hop across the stream I chugged along the trail excited that we had no real mountains to climb today and we would be getting into Monson by the end of the day which would be our final resupply of this crazy adventure.  When I came upon the west branch of the Piscataquis River I saw Crocstar in the middle of the river with his boots slung over his backpack.  I dropped my pack, took off my boots and socks, put on my Crocs and then waded out into the river.  Just as I expected the water temperature was frigid and it shocked my feet a little, but after a couple of steps it felt a little refreshing.  On the other side, I caught Crocstar in the middle of his smoke break snacking away on a Pop-tart.  I put on my shoes and decided I didn’t need much of a break so I continued on my way.  Naturally Croc caught up and passed me a couple of miles down the line but I once again ran into him while he was taking his hourly smoke break this time at the east branch of the Piscataquis River.  I saw him sitting on the other side of the river and I called over to him and asked, “Do I have to take my boots off for this one?”  His reply was that he didn’t but one of his boots took a swim for a second when he slipped.  I decided to take on the challenge and attempted a rock hop over what is normally a ford.  I made it across without any water coming over the top and into my boot.  I sat with Croc for a few minutes before getting another small head start on him.  The next section of trail we would slowly climb a couple hundred feet and eventually arrive at the blue-blaze trail to Monson.  Some hikers when they get to that point take the side trail which gets them directly into town via a road walk and shaves a mile off of the regular route.  But for us this wasn’t an option and we would be hiking on to Maine 15 where we would have to find a hitch into town.

PM:  Almost an hour on the nose after we had last taken a break, I met back up with Crocstar at the blue-blaze trail and had my final Snickers bar.  We joked about how nice it would be to take the side trail and how it could either be a cakewalk or how it would be funny if there was somehow a huge mountain between here and Monson that would take hikers hours to climb.  It was roughly another three miles to Maine 15 so I told Croc I’d see him in an hour and off we went.  I found him sitting on the rock ledge next to Maine 15, looking down at the parking lot across the street at Spoon and Nick trying to bum a ride off of the people leaving.  This area was pretty unique as far as road crossings go.  We had been walking on dirt and root trail all day and only when I was about to hit the road did I encounter a big sheet of rock.  Whenever the road was created the mountainside was carved out leaving the sides almost vertical so I had to come down off this ledge to reach the road and cross into the parking lot.  Thankfully Spoon and Nick had been here awhile and negotiated a ride with a nice guy and his dog to get us into town.  We all piled into his Jeep and with his dog riding in his lap we headed for Monson.  When we got into town the three other guys went into the Post Office while I walked down the street to the Lake Shore House to figure out what the story was on our lodging for the night.  Monson can be described as another small Maine town consisting of a main road with shops and homes straddling either side and one or two side streets.  I stepped inside the Lake Shore House and was surprised to see a small laundromat operation going on in the front room.  I moved further back into the house and passed the kitchen where I saw the cook serving up a late lunch to the people sitting in the restaurant at the rear of the building.  I was a little confused as to who to talk to until Rebekah saw me and helped me out.  She was the owner of the place and I told her I had called a couple days in advance to reserve a room.  She took me upstairs and showed me the hostel area which was really nice as it had a common sitting room with a TV with lots of movies, a laptop with Internet, a fridge, microwave, and hiker box.  While we were talking she gave me the impression that she really wanted to make sure that it was only myself and one other hiker staying in that room which I reluctantly assured her that that was the case.  Since I had planned on stuffing all four of us into that room because we were all starting to run out of AT funds we would all have to act out this unified lie and hope we didn’t get caught.  I walked back to the post office to talk the situation over with the guys.  Nick had his resupply box, Crocstar had a care package from his mom with 4-5 dozen cookies that he didn’t know what he was going to do with along with his new camera that finally made it, and Spoon received his carepackage from his step-brother.  It looked like Christmas outside the post office with packages and goods spread all over the place.  Our plan for getting all of us into that one room without Rebekah finding out was to act like Spoon and I were the two sleeping in the room and Nick and Crocstar were friends we had met on the trail today but were staying over at Shaw’s, a hostel down the street.  So if she saw them in the common area they were just “visiting”.  We got all of our stuff into the room and then inquired about getting a shuttle over to the neighboring town of Greenville where we could resupply.  There was a shuttle running later that afternoon which cost $20 but we were able to split it five ways with another hiker named Hobbit.  While waiting for our ride to arrive we met Flying Scotsman, Spicoli, and their gang while they were preparing to hitch back to the trail.  Our driver dropped us off at Northwoods Outfitter, who were awesome and fixed my poles to perfection, giving me one new middle shaft and two new bottom shafts so that I finally had two working poles for the final leg of the trek.  I also got some fuel since Spoon and I had been bumming off of Crocstar the past two nights and Crocstar bought a package of pop-tops for his Platypus which come in sets of two so he gave one to Spoon.  Then we hit the grocery store for resupply where I bought my final pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.  When we got back to Monson and started repacking our food all of us found out really quick that we had more food than we could fit into our packs.  All of us were trying to pass food off to one another but we couldn’t carry it.  Crocstar, Spoon, and I went downstairs to the restaurant for dinner while Nick stayed in the room watching TV and ate the microwave pizzas he bought at the grocery store.  After dinner, I gathered up the clothes and got laundry going and then we put “The Big Lebowski” on and sat around eating ice cream and relaxing.  Some point during the movie Rebekah came out and scolded Nick for being on the computer since it was a privilege only for guests so he apologized denying any knowledge of such a rule.  One by one, everyone went off to bed.  I sat and worked on the computer until the movie was over and then I turned everything off and went to bed.  Spoon and Nick had claimed the double bed and Crocstar was passed out on the single mattress that had been standing up in the corner of the room, so I rolled out my sleeping pad and laid down on the floor and got some “Zzzzz’s”.