Date: 2016-09-17
From: ME, Campsite, 2018.7

To: ME, US 201 at Caratunk, 2037.9 
Miles today: 19.2
Weather: broken clouds

In exactly one month, the beard will be gone, the hair trimmed, and Sherpa will be sitting behind a desk. How time flies! Today was a very flat, fairly easy day. We got up in the morning, had a small climb, and then walked over mostly flat terrain with our backpacks for close to 20 miles. At the end of our hike, there is a river without a bridge called the Kennebec, which is dam controlled and cannot be safely forded because of the uncertain releases of water. Across the river is caratunk, a city of 70 people, that has two hiker hotels and a couple restaurants. The ATC hires a ferry service to help hikers across, which is really just a guy in a canoe. We had a dilemma because the ferry hours are 9AM - 2PM. Hoping to make it to church tomorrow, we knew we would need to get across the river today. But with 20 miles of hiking, it wasn't possible to reach the ferry early enough. With bad weather rolling in, there was even a chance that the ferry wouldn't run at all tomorrow and we would be forced to zero. After enjoying breakfast around the campfire which beast had resurrected this morning, we set off, uncertain of what he day would hold. After a few hours, beast flew by us. He is the fastest hiker we know which is how he got his name. He doesn't always cover much distance, but he has the amazing ability to just float right past everyone wherever he goes. We found a great place for lunch at a pond on a secluded rock. The view was spectacular. We reached the last shelter before the river and said hi to a lot of hikers stopped for the day. One of them we recognized from Georgia! He went by mountain goat back then. We shared our first hitch with him into Helen Georgia. Back then he had lots of fancy things like a safari hat and a satellite charger. We did too! Now he was "strider", and boy could he hike. He actually passed earlier in the day and we didn't recognize him. Lean, bearded, ultralight, and fast! After catching up, we said our see ya laters and pressed on towards the river.Cell service was terribly, but we found a spot on a hill and got a call to go through. We called a motel on the other side of the river to see if there was any way to safely forge it. The owner said to us, "not if you want to live". He gave us the number of a lady named Cheryl Anderson who lives on the river and ferries hikers during the off hours. She must be trying to keep a low profile because she is not in any of the books, and none of the hikers knew there was a way across in the afternoon. We called her too and she told us she's be happy to, just yell when we get to the river. Encouraged, we headed on with a new skip in our step. We gladly shared our newfound info with Constanine, who joined us.Hiking together with Constantine! Apparently Treehugger and Mermaid had stayed back in camp a long time and he decided to set out. Chatting as we went, he told us he is a dive master and spent time in Key Largo. He also has an associates degree and is planning to hike the pct next year before finishing school. As we were all chatting, Porter "biffed" it and cut her knee. She was fine though and got right back up. Our gang of 3 made it to the river, and to our surprise, Beast was waiting there chatting with the lady who does the after hours ferries. He didn't have any cash so the 3 of us chipped in to help him across the river before dark. The canoe was very rickety and the current was very strong. Several dams were releasing simultaneously... The canoe only held 3 people, so Sherpa grabbed an oar, Porter sat on a pack in the middle, and Cheryl steered. The idea was simple, just row as hard as you can and hopefully make it through the current without being swept downstream. We shoved off and almost immediately we were turned downstream by the current. Dodging rocks, we overshot the trail on the other side of the river by hundreds of yards as our canoe was swept downstream. Thankfully, we had avoided the rocks and didn't tip. Climbing onto shore, we walked the canoe back to the trail, where she then continued to walk it a significant ways upstream as we resumed our hike. There were the beautiful official canoes, all lined up taunting us as we left the shore.After shuttling the others across, she met us at the nearby road crossing and gave us a ride to the Sterling Inn, a hiker friendly motel with a great resupply. Happy to be in town, across the river, away from rain, and in range of church we called it a night.