Date: 2014-09-20
From: Stratton Motel

To: East Flagstaff Road
Miles today: 16.7

I woke up at 6:00, laid in bed and checked facebook and the weather on my phone. I got up at 6:15, got dressed and loaded my backpack. I am taking the bare minimum today,we have decided to slackpack south the last rugged mountain range of Maine today. We will end up back at Stratton tonight and tomorrow take a shuttle to East Flafstaff Road and hike north again. I will miss the mountain views but I am worn out from the endless ups and downs from the last six months. After tomorrow the trail gets a lot flatter all the way to Baxter State Park. It will be mainly roots and rocks for us now. Sue dropped us off at the gas station for coffee and breakfast while she took some other hikers out of town. At 7:50 she picked us up and dropped us off on the trail at 8:30. We got one view at Little Bigelow Mountain and then the tops were all clouds the rest of the day. The first peak was 3010 feet with gray skies but the weather would get worse as we went up. We walked a ridge for about a mile then a long downhill then back up to Avery Peak. Northbound hikers were all warning us about the high winds up on top. There was a plaque honoring Myron Avery at Avery Peak. He took Benton MacKaye's dream of a trail going from Georgia to Maine and made it happen by working with the government and using the power of the PATC. Avery Peak was 4090 feet and the west peak of Bigelow Mountain was 4145 feet. We didn't get to enjoy the views of one of the prettiest mountains in Maine. All that we got to experience were the winds that porobably blew at 60 mph on top. It was an experience to remember witnessing the raw power on the mountain tops. It was blowing us sideways as we crossed the peaks. We climbed South Horn(3831 feet) and North Horn(3720 feet) but the wind was not as bad because we weren't really above treeline. We met northbound hikers all day. Freckles, Dragonfly,Marathon, Southbound, Sloth, Solitude, Chicklet, Preacher, Pace, Dos Lekis, and Poncho, but no Puzzle. We have no idea how we missed him today we know he was on the trail hiking north. We were out of the woods by 5:25 and along with Mad Maxx we got a ride into town pretty quick. I tried to use my debit card this morning but the machine didn't want to give me any cash. I didn't think anything about it until Paige said that I had a withdrawal of $62.50 from my account. Not only didn't I get my $60 this morning but they even charged me $2.50 for using their machine. I checked my balance this evening and sometime during the day they had credited the $62.50 back to my account. It was quite a relief that I didn't have to try and contact people to clear this up while hiking the AT. No Rush, Astroguy, and I had dinner with Hob, Chickadee, and Mad Max. After dinner I took a shower and then we walked to the laundrymat to do our laundry. I will have clean socks the rest of the way to Monson, Maine. I hope to meet up with my son Carson in Monson in 4-5 days and he will hike the last 115 miles with me. I repacked my full backpack and then spent the rest of the evening working on journals. I am caught up once more, it has been a lot of work keeping the journals up to date. I hope that people reading them have gained some understanding of what it has been like to hike this amazing trail. By the way, we passed the 2000 mile mark today, only 171.5 miles to go. Thanks to everyone for the positive comments and words of encouragement, it has helped every day.