Date: 2004-08-10
From: Speck Pond Campsite

To: Ellis River
Miles today: 14.1

By 8am the trail was drawing me up and toward the summit of Old Speck Mountain, the first 4,000 foot peak in Maine. Ya gotta love waking to a 740 foot climb in the first mile of the day.There were some wonderful waterfalls and cascades along the way down Old Speck. There was a strong urge to take a dip or shower but road head fever was at play here. The trail dropped me down 2,700 feet to Grafton Notch and Maine Route 26 by 10:30am.It was time to hitch into Bethel to restock the pantry so to speak. Of course there's not a lot of traffic in this neck of the woods and Bethel was 17 miles down the road. One good thing was that the chances were good that anyone headed that direction would be going at least that far. According to the register at the parking lot, Waterloo and Machine were just ahead of me, no doubt having opted to skip Speck Pond Campsite and it's fee. They were out of food and there next food drop was in Andover, another 10 miles up the trail. Their journal entry said ¢We're out of food (almost ¢ 3 bars left) racing toward the road.¢ That sounds about perfect. They'll be fine.Standing there on the side of the road in the blazing sunlight was getting old. Not many had passed me by. Actually, not many had passed at all. The grumpies tried to take over. Eventually a guy in a pickup stopped and picked me up. He was going past Bethel but apologized for needing to make a stop. There was an antique dealer he had heard of on this road. A short stop didn't matter to me. I was just so happy to have a ride. We talked as he drove. The antique dealer wasn't home so we kept going. He dropped me in Bethel.Bethel was a nice little town. The main street was on a bit of a hill side. The grocery store was small and jam packed. There was no bench outside to pack on. It was kind of tricky trying to keep the cart from rolling down the sidewalk while using it as a staging platform for repackaging food and packing my pack. Down at the bottom of the hill I had noticed a place that advertised meals and ice cream. That seemed like a good place to stop. Lunch would be a sandwich followed by some ice cream. There was some concern knocking about my head about getting back to the trail. The needed road took a bypass around town. There were some confusing on off ramps involved in getting back to it. This was part of that civilization paranoia thing. A vacationing family arrived at the eatery about the same time. We had occasional exchanges which eventually led to the inevitable questions. Fortunately the questions were followed by the offer of a ride. They were going back to a camp ground and couldn't get me all the way back to the trail but that was fine with me. Just get me out of town which is what they did after some slight rearranging in the van. Trust and adventure are still alive, even in the American family. How reassuring.The next hitch began at a desolate corner across form a rundown abandoned building in the middle of some nowhere fields. The sun was hot, the traffic nonexistent and my stamina was in question. Still, in time, a pickup with a couple of guys in the front did stop. They asked my destination and told me to hop in the back and bang on the window when we got to the trail. They were on some kind of mission the find some kind of machinery, buy it, and take it back home in the mid west somewhere. Sure, they were on an adventure too. There is nothing quite like a ride in the cluttered bed of a pickup facing sideways or backwards as the wonders of the natural world unfold before you. Of course, eventually, turning around to look for the trail became a good idea. What a great hitch. They dropped me off and tore down the other side of the pass.It was 3pm. Four and a half hours wasn't bad for a town stop in a town 17 miles from the trail. Keep on truckin'. 4:30pm found me back up at 3,680' on the West Peak of Baldplate Mountain, 3 miles from and 2,200 feet above Grafton Notch. This felt good. From Grafton Notch this was all new territory for me and it would all be new from here to Katahdin. That was nice too.The trail here was my favorite kind. It wove in and out of boreal forests and krumholz. It danced over giant slabs of ledge and among great boulders. Cairn, the goddess of direction was there to guide when her trusty sidekick Blaze could not be. It was just wonderful.There was a local who was up on a day hike to East Baldplate. It was about 5pm. He offered to take a couple of pictures of me with my camera. He was drinking a beer and made me nervous but we did the photo anyway. We hiked together for a while and talked. Honestly though there was something about him that was rubbing me the wrong way. May be it was the beer or the attitude it brought out in him. At any rate, he had knee problems and had to go easy on the down hills. That gave me a good excuse to leave him in the dust and that was fine by me.About an hour later there was another northbounder on the trail. He was moving at a good pace. We were talking and hiking together. He was in front when he suddenly stopped and shushed me. A moose was moving off the trail about 30 feet ahead. We both went for our cameras. My photos just show a bunch of gnarled trees. Hopefully his are better. This was the first moose he had ever seen. He was pretty excited to say the least. That was cool.From the shelter journal entries it looks like his name was Roadrunner but honestly I can't remember. We hiked together till about 7:30pm when I called it quits at the West Branch of the Ellis River after a 14.1 mile day. He kept on going another mile to a road to hitch into Andover. Too bad, he was good company and kept a good pace.There was a pretty cool cascade and flume here. My camp was a ways up stream to try to avoid what appeared to be a fairly heavily impacted area right around where the trail crossed the river. Pitching the tent was a good choice since it did rain some that night.