Date: 2018-06-15
From: Skyland Service Rd North

To: Mile 952.7
Miles today: 19.1

It was a beautiful day for hiking. Or, in the words of a day hiker who greeted us today, we couldn¢t have asked for better weather to be on the trail.We were up early, well at least I was. There was still a lot of packing up today. Boy do you ever need a lot of stuff to car camp! I also wanted to go through all of our things again to make certain we had gathered up everything that needed to be in our backpacks. I packed both of our bags, checking off on a mental list everything we should have. There was one thing missing. The trowel. When our campsite was packed up, we hit the road. It was an hour drive from the campground to where we had hiked to yesterday. Once they dropped us off Mark and Evan would continue heading north to home. Being with family was definitely a morale booster, something we both needed, and something we could benefit from more often. It was even more than the company though. It was getting our gear taken care of as well. Mark had brought me my replacement boots. Hopefully they will be as fantastic as the first pair I owned and a great improvement from their predecessors. He also brought Cole New trekking polls and a replacement air mattress. He patched holes in our tent fly as well as the screen and replaced the batteries in our headlamps and in Cole¢s watch. My clothing had begun to wear out too so he brought me a new pair of pants and new underwear. For Cole he brought a pair of sleeping shorts to replace the woollong johns he had still been wearing. We were definitely getting a fresh startAn unusually high number of squirrels were hanging out all up and down the highway this morning. They went into their frenzied ¢which way now?¢ furry as we approached. Then there was a dear standing on our side of the road. Unmoving, it eyed us as we neared it and slowed.A vehicle was approaching from the other direction. Cole yelled, ¢It¢s Miss Janet!¢Sure enough it was. We had already stopped for the deer. Mark lowered his window and flagged her down. I jumped out of the van and ran over to give her a hug. We chatted for a bit but we both had to move on as traffic lined up behind our vehicles. When we arrived at the Skyland Parking lot, Cole and I donned our backpacks. Our family hugged us, kissed us, prayed for us, then hugged us some more. ¢You don¢t have to hike anymore mom.¢ Evan said. He misses me. A lot. That made leaving hard.More hugs , more kisses, then we were off on the trail alone once again, heading North to Katahdin.Our bags were heavy with Resupply items and special treats as well. It only takes a couple of times of having to Resupply at Dollar General before you really appreciate having a good place to Resupply. I appreciated it a bit too much I think. We were spoiled from slackpackong for three days, but after a period of sluggishness my body said, ¢oh I remember this¢, and then mustered up what was required to get a rhythmic pace going. Originally we decided that we would go 16 miles and try to get to bed early. With our family visiting us, our bedtime got pushed back. Four nights with less sleep had caught up to both of us. However, in the guidebook I saw that we would be coming up to a wayside at the end of the day. The waysides are like a convenience store, gift shop and deli all rolled into one. A blackberry milkshake at the end of the day sounded like a really good idea. It took nothing at all to convince Cole. Our new distance was 18 miles. We stopped at a picnic area for lunch where we met up with Pirate and two other hikers. Pirate asked if we had seen a bear yet. He had not, and was anxious to have a bear story to tell like everyone else.Shortly after, I was hiking along ahead of Cole, when suddenly I happened upon a bear about fifteen feet from the trail. I had to blink and look again. It didn¢t really care that I was there, but I certainly wasn¢t going to pass by that close to it. The trail in front of me curved around which would have brought me in closer proximity to the bear.I began to yell at it. ¢Go away bear, go away.¢ It didn¢t care. In fact, it took a few steps closer to me, not because I was there, but because that just happened to be where what he was nibbling on was leading him.¢BEAR! GO AWAY!¢I swung my poles around and clanged them together. Still, that bear didn¢t care. He stepped closer.I heard Cole coming up the trail behind me. He had a big smile on his face and he was laughing.¢There is no bear.¢ he said, thinking that I was trying to trick him.I shouted and pounded and clanged some more.¢Is there a bear? Oh!!! There IS a bear.¢The bear did not seem to like the arrival of the newcomer. Could he count and had realized he was outnumbered? He turned and ran away.We caught up to Pirate again a while later. By then, he had seen a bear too and we swapped stories.Cole saw two more bears on his own before the day was through.Deer were plentiful on the trail today as well and they were not afraid of us either. On two separate occasions a deer walked up the trail straight for us as though it were coming to check us out.We arrived at the wayside around 6pm. Other hikers had convinced us to go for the blackberry ice cream instead of the milkshake, so that is what we got. Cole also had a hamburger and I a grilled cheese. We bought a new trowel also.It was getting late. We heard that there was a small campsite a short distance up the trail, but by the time we got there it was full. We walked a bit further, about a mile in total, and found a flat enough spot to set up the tent. I was a bit nervous about all of the bears in the vicinity. We put everything that we had with any kind of scent into food bags and Cole did an excellent job hanging them. We settled in for the night with one ear open listening for bears.PSPlease note: (mom) I did not pull Out the camera to take a picture of the bear until he was moving away.