Throughout the wilderness there are tons of little ponds & lakes all over the place. Some of them had the perfect little beachy swimming holes. Others have nice big rocks right off the shore
The first few miles were a breeze. A few bumps up & down but nothing to complain about. We saw a pretty good size falls right off the bat also.
View of a pond we hiked around.
Thank goodness for all the trail maintenance because a lot of the climbs had nice stone stairs leading up to the summit.
Great view of the lakes below.
So Maine has been notorious for there bogs. Lots of really muddy trail with half rotten bog boards for you to walk on. A lot of hikers slip into them especially if they are wet. I have been fortunate enough to keep myself bog free. Paddy Cakes hasn't been that lucky.
Picture of one of the may bogs
To end our first day we had our last fire tower for the trail. The entire top half had fallen off but we decided to climb up it anyways. Why not!
We had want to make it 25 miles but the water situation on the top of the mountain was scarce so we had to stop at twenty.
Our next day was one of the hardest days for me on the trail. The profile of the terrain was very deceiving. It was a lot of small jagged ups & downs. Then we had four big peaks to get over to finish the day & make it our goal of 24 miles. Well right in the middle of the jagged stuff I had my first emotional break down of the trip. Tears started flowing & I was tired of walking up hill. Paddy Cakes did real good with me & we made it to our half way point for the day by a river where we had lunch. There we took a good hour & a half for lunch while I calmed down. We told ourselves we would go as far as we could & then stop. No pressure.
We started our peaks & knocked the first one out pretty quick. We even got our first view of the finish line, 95 miles away.
Our first view if Katahdin.
Somewhere in between the climbs we were lucky enough to get another moose sighting.
Pretty good size female moose.
So the second peak was a little harder so we stopped for a snack which got us over the third one ok. The last & final big climb before the end was called White Cap. We were so excited that we had been able to make it up all four peaks & conquered our last big peak before the finish.
What can we say we were ready to be done climbing.
View from the top.
We made it our goal of 24 miles for the day.
A great hornets nest that Paddy Cakes said I got to close too.
Two more lakes
Our third day in the wilderness we decided to push our biggest day yet, a 30.2 mile day. It was a longggg day and we took zero pictures.
Our last day we pushed a 26.5 day to make it out of the 100 mile wilderness. Following after our biggest day with another big day was tough but we had food driving us.
There have been so many great large boulders with fun fern hair on them.
This will give you a idea of how large the boulders are.
The moss has been amazing & covers everything here in Maine.
This is our first official view of Katahdin. It is only about 20 miles from us at this point. It is a wonderful site being so close to our goal but also so sad to know its ending soon.
Right after the great view we heard something rumbling in the bushes. I thought it was maybe a baby bear cub but nope it ended up being a huge porcupine.
This is him climbing up the tree.
He was huge. You can see his quills in the sun.
So finally our day came to an end with another warning sign saying to bring enough food into the wilderness. Food was on the brain for us so we headed down into the Abol Bridge campground where we grabbed dinner & a campsite.
Our final view for the day. A bald eagle flew over us right as I took this picture. It was a real touching moment. We made it through the wilderness in 4 days. Man are we beat! Ready to get up the mountain & reach our goal.
-Puddin'
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