Date: 2017-08-02
From: Speck Pond Campsite

To: Grafton Notch
Miles today: 4.6

I woke up a few times throughout the night for various reasons... when my nose had filled up so that I could take more decongestants, to water the grass... and each time the stars shown brightly above, the milky way on full display in the heavens above, even some of the nebulae visible as dark splotches amidst the diffuse glow of countless stars. Alas, I woke up at around 4am to see the first light of the new day start to block out the stars and when I next awoke at 7am they had all disappeared save for the closest star.We had decided that we deserved to sleep in this morning since we had been up until 11pm once dinner was all said and done. We lazily packed up and was visited by the site caretaker who we hadn't registered with last night since we had gotten in so late. This campsite, because its in a high use area, has an AMC caretaker and so they collect a fee for anyone who stays at the site. I was a little bit disappointed... I had thus far managed to avoid having to pay for a campsite on the AT and this is the last one on the trail, but oh well. Before hitting the trail I called and reserved a cabin for the night in Andover, ME since I wanted to get off trail for a night to be a little more comfortable while my cold ran its course and we were both game for a shower. We planned to do 14mi today to get to the first trailhead which led into Andover which would bring us the rest of the way over Old Speck and then over Baldplate Mt before hitting town.We hit the trail at ~830am and climbed up the last 600ft to the summit of Old Spec Mt. The climb was fun... nothing like a couple scrambles up some sheer rock faces to wake you up in the morning. The actual summit of the mountain was 0.3mi of the AT, but I headed up to check it out. The top of the firetower was a small wooden platform, enclosed with handrails and would've been an awesome place to cowboy camp. Oh well... next time.From the top the Whites were still visible behind me and the sheer rock faces of Grafton Notch, dropping hundreds of feet and shimmering as water dripped down then, were laid out before me. The full seven peaks of Sunday River ski area were visible but overall the landscape was relatively untouched by human activity, a welcome sight up here in the mountanous north as it had been in the southern mountains. I lingered for a while at the top, enjoying a couple snacks before heading down and back to the trail for a long descent. Again today I popped in some podcasts to take my mind off my sickness and cruised down the hill. At the bottom I waited for Lost at the crossing of Rt26. As soon as she arrived she asked if I wanted to find a ride into town. I had just spent the last couple minutes thinking about how much the next 10mi were going to suck to hike and how we probably wouldn't get to town until pretty late, so I was game. The only wrinkle was that we were deep down in Grafton Notch, didn't know which way on the road led to Andover, and had no service. We tried to flag a couple cars down but only managed to get a french canadian to stop for us, but she wasn't familiar with the area. We tried a couple of day hikers from the parking lot, but they were from CT and also weren't familiar with the area (and had no extra room in their car). Finally a dad and son emerged from the woods after completing their day hike and agreed to give us a ride in the direction they were headed. We hopped in and chatted with them on the ride... they didn't seem to be very interested in anything more than short day hikes and didn't seem to fully grasp (or be interested in grasping) what we were doing, but that's fine. They dropped us at the corner of Rt26 and Rt2, where they needed to head south and we needed to head East.At that corner, as we were preparing to try to find another hitch for the next leg of our journey, we walked past and greeted a cyclist. It turns out that she biked here from Vancouver over the course of 40days for a friend's wedding, and her boyfriend was in the area and had a pickup truck, so she volunteered him to drive us the rest of the way. She had done the Long Trail a couple of years ago, and so as a backpacker and long distance cyclist understood our plight. She gave him a call, told him the plan, and he pulled up a couple minutes later with a bag full of fruit, which she took her fill of and then gave the rest to us. What TRAIL MAGIC! We piled our packs in the back and were off, zooming towards Andover many times faster than we could've hiked.We chatted on the drive and he was much more interested in the lifestyle and our adventures on the trail than our last ride had been, and we had fun trading stories of his cycling adventures too. He dropped us right at the door of our hostel... man, what an awesome way to get around.We checked in and headed into town... I picked up my package from the post office (containing some heavier clothing, which I don't think I'll need now that I'm out of the Whites, but oh well), got a burger at the restaurant/hostel, and hit the restaurant/store to pick up a couple of miscellaneous food items to round out my supplies for another couple days of hiking. As we were walking back we got rained on in bright sunshine... no cloud visible in the sky above us... strange weather.It turns out the cabin we got wasn't in town, but was actually a couple miles outside of town, so we got our shuttle out to the cabin. At first I was pretty unimpressed with the cabin... the studs were uncovered inside and the siding was just plywood, the minifridge and hotplate plugged into a power strip which was the only electricity in the place (save a single hanging lamp which is the only light), and the bathhouse, while clean, wasn't anything to write home about. Over the course of the afternoon the atmosphere really made it work... it was quiet, just the noise of the wind and an occasional car going by broke the peace, and the cabin had no wifi or cell service, so no outside distractions were available. To pass the time I journaled, organized my pack, and just relaxed on the couch on the porch, a great afternoon. As evening struck Lost and I watched a couple episodes of Park and Rec on her ipad while we ate dinner. Towards the evening I was finally feeling better to the point where I didn't need medicine to stem the flow of mucus from my nose and so Lost and I finally split the cider that I had been carrying since Gorham but hadn't been well enough to drink... 1.5lbs off my back tomorrow!All and all, today turned into an awesome day, chill and relaxed, just what the doctor ordered.We'll head back into town tomorrow and I'm going to send a package home with a couple of spare gear items I don't need anymore... just a little less weight to carry for the last couple hundred miles. We'll probably get breakfast in town and then get a shuttle back to the trail and tackle Baldplate Mt. I think the weather is supposed to go downhill for the rest of the week with some rain in the forecast, but we'll see!