22.8mi
Elevation chart courtesy of Guthook's AT Hiker app. He has apps for many trails including the PCT and CDT.
While we were getting ready this morning, an aggressive little chipmunk was running into our tents and even trying to nibble on mine. I was not amused, but he had Jett Cat's heart so I have included a picture she took of him.
The big theme of the day today was the fords.You can see by the elevation chart that there was a ton of water! We had four fords today and three of them were fairly wide and deep, but nothing swift or frightening. Maine is said to not believe in bridges and the rain lately have made the fords more exciting. Here are photos from the big ones today.
The fun part of today was that most of it was smooth trail that we could really stretch our legs on. Much of it was along water too, so we both zonked out with the white noise and spaced into our minds for awhile. It was like being hypnotized. I think our bodies and minds are so used to being in difficult slow terrain that we didn't know how to react to smooth level trail! We did an 18mi day to town and with the great trail, we made it by 2:15pm.
We stayed at the Lakeshore House and Hostel. There are a lot of hikers here, but we have our own room to get some space from the crowd, so that is nice. The house is right along a pond with canoes and kayaks free for use. We had imagined that we'd go out in a canoe, but by the time we did some chores and got showered, it was just cold and not as appealing. Great view though!
There is even a pub attached so we ate there for lunch and dinner. At dinner, we were joined by Seabiscuit who overlapped with Jett Cat a few weeks ago and also started the same day as Jett Cat. He is the only other hiker we've met that also started in April as most people in this bubble started in early March. We should see Seabiscuit more this leg as he plans to camp at the same place as us tomorrow night.
So this is it! Our last trail town! We have 115mi left and have all the days planned out to finish August 5th. We have buffered a day if we need to wait out a bad weather day on Katahdin because we don't want to go up in fog if we can avoid it and wait for a clear day. It is starting to settle in for Jett Cat and she isn't ready for it to end. I don't feel like it's really ending because I have about 10 days to do on the Long Trail after I finish. I'm sure it will hit me more as we get closer to Katahdin. We do hope to do the Knife's Edge route off the back side of Katahdin and have a ride arranged to pick us up, so all seems to be falling into place. Just hope the weather is good on August 5th! Fingers crossed...