July 17

The lady who runs the motel/hostel gave me and several others a ride at 7:30 to the trailhead.  The next stretch of wilderness that I will do is 37 miles long and comes out at Caratunk, Maine.  Right now I'm at exactly 2001.0 miles of my journey.  I have 188.2 miles to go.  Probably another 14 days more or less.  It all depends on the trail, the weather, my nero and zeros, and lastly when I need to resupply.  I'm ready to finish but I'm not going to push myself.  I want to summit Katahdin under clear blue skies.  So I'm realistically looking at the end of July or the first week of August which is about when I figured I would finish.

I started off today's hike with another north bound thru hiker who goes by Not Yet.  I've hiked with him before.  He's younger and faster than me so he took off on his own after about an hour of hiking together. The hike took me up and over the Bigelow Mountains and Avery Peak.  I crossed paths along the way with several south bound hikers, and bunch of day hikers who always interview me about my journey. The views today were outstanding because the weather was perfect.  I've stopped for the night at mile 2015.5 and am tent camping just 50 yards from the trail by myself and just before Little Bigelow Lean-to or shelter.  In Maine the shelters are referred to as lean-to's.