Date: 2010-10-10
From: photos uploaded!

To: Mt Katahdin and then home
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: clear sky

Well this was our last day in Maine today. We hiked Mt. Katahdin a few weeks ago when the weather was nice and had a glorious day there. Both of us were in tears as we realized that our journey was coming to an end. We struggled when we hit the rebar on the steepest section and decided that we couldn't make the summit with everyone else and took our ending photos there. It was a difficult realization when we stopped and turned around but for us it has always been about the journey and the time together, not whether we hiked from end to end on this glorious trail. Cabana Boy managed to loose his wallet somewhere on this mountain during our climb. We only realized it when we were back in Millinockett eating a victory meal and I went to pay for it. Oh Sh*t, where is my wallet! Out on the sidewalk we had a truck explosion as we emptied out everything onto the pavement to look for it. No luck. Back to Baxter State Park, where we had to talk our way back in to look for it in the parking lot of Katahdin Stream Campground and to ask other hikers if they had found it. Nothing. Now it was getting dark and with no other recourse we ended up driving straight home to mitigate the damage from that fiasco. We arrived home at 1:30 in the morning and crashed in our own bed. The day after all my credit cards had been canceled and I had given up hope, my wallet was found buried in the cooler in the back of the truck! Damn. Well at least I didn't need to replace my drivers license. Ordered new debit and credit cards and planned to head north again to spend a few more weeks in the Mountains. That brought us to this weekend, October 10th. As we were heading home for the last time we talked about the feelings we were both sharing. Cabana Boy's observation is that we are not spending enough time together already since we have pickup up the car, we are both too distracted by the chores and trappings of life and not focused on each other they way we were when we were on the trail with just our backpacks and nothing but miles to go. Since we have been home, we are too concerned with getting the house back together and getting things back in order. CB's quote was "I knew I would be giving up so much to come out on this trail and spend six months together hiking, but I never realized how much more I would be giving up when we came home". Anyone who has hiked this trail knows what we are saying here. It has been the best six months of our marriage and of our lives and how do we go back to our "regular life" afterward and not feel a little remorse or perhaps cheated by not having what we did on trail. These memories already seem surreal, like they didn't really happen to us. Did we really spend all that time out hiking or did we just have the same dream last night? We took thousands of photos and a bunch of short nothing videos and it is great to have them to look back on. As we upload them we can remind ourselves of how incredibly lucky we have been to take this trip together and reminisce over the great experiences we have had and the AMAZING people we have met. Many of the things in our reasons for hiking list have become so true for us. I no longer feel cynical about people, we are all so capable of good. Every person on the trail, hiker trash or trail angel, has shown such good will and the ability to give so freely of themselves to help others that we are both awed by their magnanimity. If we were to write a book, and SO many others have, ours would be about trail angels. It seems like every thru hiker has several stories about how they were taken home and treated like royalty at some strangers home where they were fed, bathed and treated like family without even asking for help. Our stories are the same, if you have read our journal. The trail community is unique but can't be the only one out there. We plan to keep our eyes open to them in the future.... To our trail friends out there, and we hope you know who you are, we miss you all already. Please, if you ever get this far in our journal, email us our call us or stop and see us up in Massachusetts. We would love to hear from you all in the future. Looking forward to a Trail Days reunion next year! Cabana Boy and Dutch Tape. We will be uploading photos for the next couple of months. If you are interested, check back once in a while. We also have some journal entries to add as time allows.