Maine!

We've done it! We've walked from Georgia to Maine. However, there are several hundred miles of trail in Maine that we still need to cover. Katahdin is about 256 miles away. It will take us another couple of weeks to get there. Every day, when we would hit the trail, M and I would exchange a little banter about which direction we should go (north or south) and would always say, well, let's just go to Maine. Now we can't really say that anymore, because we are already there!

The hiking is challenging - lots of boulder hopping, and scrambling up rock faces, but the views from the top of every mountain are outstanding. We just made it through the Mahoosuc Notch, which is supposed to be the hardest mile on the AT. And the rumors were right....there WAS a decaying moose carcass in the Notch. Smelled delicious. Then, right after the Notch, we had to climb the Mahoosuc Arm, which is a really tall, really steep mountain. The weather was less moist than the previous day, when we were climbing Goose Mountain, as a cold front blew in. The clouds were whipping across the face of Goose; the winds gusted so hard I was knocked clear off my feet several times. It wasn't exactly raining, although everything was wet, because we were in a cloud. Anyway, Mahoosuc Arm had several sections of smooth flat rock face at such an angle that I often found myself crawling up on all fours. It was not exactly climbing, although we've had plenty of that recently, but it kind of crosses the line in terms of my definition of hiking, which is much more related to wandering through the woods on a smooth dirt path while birds chirp overhead and squirrels frolic in the trees.

Maine is also really, really cold. The locals say this weather is unusual, that August is normally a bit warmer, but there was a frost warning last night! The temperatures in the mountains are dipping into the 20s at night. It reminds us of our early days on the trail, when it was, quite literally, still winter. When we stopped hiking in the evening, it was a race to pitch the tent, change out of our wet clothes and prepare and eat dinner, before diving into our sleeping bags.

Tonight, we are staying at the Cabin, where we have already been fed and are getting ready to tuck into warm beds in the bunk house. We are truly back in rural America and the hospitality and generosity of the people is reminiscent of what we found in the South. M even found some fried pickles when we stopped at the General Store in Andover, ME this afternoon.