MOOSE DAY!

8-12-09 day 71
start: Baldpate Lean-To, ME
end: Hall Mountain Lean-To, ME
daily mileage: 14.0
total mileage: 915.2


Today was Moose Day!! Early in the morning, I was woken up by another guy in the shelter who pointed to a spot right in front of the shelter- I looked up, and a huge bull moose was eating some leaves not 20 feet away! It was really cool. Sea Monster was facing the other way, and we didn't want to move to scare the moose away, so he missed sighting 1- but the moment we began hiking, we both saw him again about a quarter mile down the trail! He was really awesome, and as we've both wanted to see a moose for a long time, we were pretty stoked.


We climbed Bald Pate Mountain, a nice push, and met more French-Canadians out hiking in Maine. We hadn't really realized how close Maine was to Quebec, but there are lots of them out here! We hitched into Andover, which is supposed to be a tough hitch but we got lucky right away- first car that passed (which passed seconds after we got there)! In Andover, we resupplied at the little general store, and ate lunch there. We ran into two other north-bounders, Katz and Karjim. These two guys started immediately after school got out, early May, and had to be done by mid-August to get back to school! This is crazy fast. They were both in pain, and we gave them lots of our Motrin. We played with the idea of staying in Andover, but fortunately, pressed on- but didn't get in until late. Which is becoming a trend...