Date: 2015-07-28
From: ME 17

To: ME 4 (Rangeley)
Miles today: 13.2
Weather: overcast clouds

Today was a day to pack up our gear and move to another base. We're headed for The Farmhouse Inn on ME 4 just outside Rangeley. So we put our provisions for today's hike into our slack packs and then loaded everything else into our backpacks. We've been doing this for quite a while, so it's not hard to sort things out. We made arrangements with our shuttle driver to take our backpacks on to The Farmhouse after dropping us at our starting point, and then leave Spartacus' truck at our end point on ME 4. Having Spartacus' truck available has been great, we don't have to wait on a shuttle driver at the end point, and also we have transportation to town for food and resupply when we need it. But it's a lot of extra work for Spartacus and we appreciate it. Our hike today was billed as a "cake walk," not much elevation change - no mountains to cross. But it wasn't level and there were a lot of obstacles. The obstacles were primarily mud. If I knew ahead of time, I would have counted the number of plank walks and puncheons that we had to cross, there were a lot. Puncheons can be tricky enough, particularly if you have to balance on a single plank. Today a lot of the puncheons & planks were very old, some were broken and many were severely rotted (occasionally, only the nails were left). Some of the planks were already under water and others were unstable. I remember from last year that there is a lot of this in Maine, so we need to get used to it. Mostly it means doing a lot of fancy footwork to hop between roots and rocks to stay out of the mud and avoid the slippery, old, unstable planks. Sorry about the complaining, it is what it is. Otherwise the day was great. A little warm around the middle of the day, but scattered clouds helped mitigate the heat. We had a lot of short ups and downs and we passed several beautiful ponds - I would call them lakes, but Mainers call them ponds. One had a lean-to near the edge with a sandy beach and swimming. We also saw a canoe in one. Spartacus suggested that some ponds are the result of blocks of glacial ice left behind. Sand and rocks filled in around the edges and eventual the ice melted and a pond formed in the depression. He says these are usually shallow. I think others are very deep and I'm not sure of their origin. But they are all beautiful, typically very blue and calm, and surrounded by woods mountainsides. Besides the ponds, there weren't too many distinctive features, but it was a pretty hike. I should mention that the was a privy right on the AT at one point. It is literally so close that there is a white blaze painted beside the door. When we reached the end point, Spartacus truck was parked at the trailhead parking lot and we drove a short distance to The Farmhouse. We stayed here last year and met Stacey and Shane, and their children and really enjoyed it. They have been working hard on finishing out the interior, and significantly expanding the bunkhouse. Shane does the work himself and uses mostly re-purposed materials, our room is finished with reclaimed barn wood. Spartacus and Focus are staying here also, but Ranger enjoys the woods and has decided to camp out on the trail for several days. He will rejoin us in Stafford. We're back to the mountains tomorrow, with a climb across the Saddleback Mountains. I'm hoping for some good pictures.