Date: 2005-07-08
From: Lake Shore Cabin, White House Landing, ME

To: Near Crawford Pond, ME
Miles today: 16.1

16.1 miles todayNear Crawford Pond, Maine Another beautiful morning. Quin and I were in the Lake Shore Cabin last night. It was great!! There were loons making their calls on and off all night. I woke up at 4am because it started getting just a little light out. I layed there listening to all the birds getting ready to meet the day. After a while a loon joined in. I really am in paradise!!! By 4:30am the sun is just about up and it's light out...great for a morning person. Bill cooks an all you can eat breakfast and serves it at 8am so I just layed in bed and listened to the birds until almost 7. I made Quin and I some coffee, then went up to the bunkhouse where 4 other sobos were staying. I talked to Kirsten, Steve, Matt and Squeem for a while before heading up for breakfast. It wasn't quite ready yet so I resupplied from their small store with enough food to get me to Monson. Bill cooked a fantastic breakfast made better by the good company of the other 5 hikers. Bill even made his famous home fries just for our group. We all ate until we couldn't eat anymore. The 4 sobos all decided to take a zero to enjoy White House Landing, but Quin and I took the boat back to the other side of the lake and hiked on. I always hate to say goodbye to Bill and Linda. They really make you feel welcome out in the middle of no where.  We hiked a couple miles to where you can climb out on some rocks in a lake and get a great view of Katahdin. Otter '95 and his fiancee Super Goose were their and we enjoyed talking to them for about half an hour. They're doing the wilderness in celebration of Otter's 10th aniversary of his thru hike. We all went our separate ways after taking some pictures. We stopped at Potahwadjo Spring Lean-to long enough to get some great tasting spring water and sign the register. We hiked on another few miles to Antlers Campsite and ate lunch and went swimming. I even went out and jumped right in. Quincygirl is teaching me how to be a REAL man!! When you're from Florida, all this water is cold!!  :-)) Antlers would be a great place to tent because it's surrounded on three sides by water, but we were early in our day so we hiked on. We came up on a young bull moose. He wasn't sure where to go and ended up almost circling us about 35 feet away. That's the 4th moose on this trip already. We kept walking and spent a long time walking next to Cooper Brook. Quin went swimming again while this man soaked his feet. Ha!!, I have nothing left to prove.  ;-))) We got to Cooper Brook Falls Lean-to and saw 3 nobos. One guy I had talked to in Monson the day before I climbed Katahdin. His name is Superfeet and his cousin and Web were the other two. There was a group of young hikers there. They were probably 16 or 17 years old. The girls were in the stream shaving their legs and the guys were washing their hair...we hiked on. We found a great spot near Crawford Pond and set up our tents then went right in swimming again. We had our diner afterwards and talked quite a while about what a great day this and all the others have been since we climbed Katahdin. The sun is setting over the lake, the birds are singing their last song of the day and Quin is already sleeping in her tent which is so close to mine that I can hear her breathing.