Day 164

Day 164 – August 18  –  9.4 miles  –  Sabbath Day Pond to Rangeley ME

Elevation Change:   3238 feet

When I used the privy in the morning, I saw what may be my favorite sign on the trail.

It was cold and rainy out.  With the promise of town less than 10 miles away, we didn’t stop to take pictures of a wet/cold forest.  We hiked the 9.4 miles to town in less than 4 hours including snack breaks.

When I say “to town”, I really mean, “to road”.  The town of Rangeley was really 9 miles down the road.

The first thing we did when we got to the road, was to make a left, and head toward The Hiker Hut Hostel, 0.3 miles down the road.

When we got there, the place was packed. No Vacancy.  We would have to find another place to stay.

I’m pretty sure we saw Supe there.  We hadn’t seen him since the 4th of July party.  I say I’m pretty sure, because I was a little distracted because of the whole “no place to stay” problem.

So, the Tramily walked back to the road, and put our thumbs out.  It was cold, raining, and there weren’t too many cars out on the road.  The cars that did pass by, didn’t stop.  I don’t blame them.  It was the middle of the day.  They probably had someplace to be.

We saw a camper van come down the road and all of us said it wouldn’t stop for us, but we put our thumbs out anyway.  The camper…..pulled over!  We had a ride to town!

 

The driver (I didn’t catch his name) was the husband of the hiker who went by the name, Woman on Fire.  He was her support team.  He had no interest in hiking the AT, but he was more than willing to meet up with her every few days to bring her to town, etc.  Two people, having two completely different adventures, together.  Cool!

When we got dropped off in Rangeley, we made a bee line towards Sarges Pub.  It was close, it had food, and it was warm.  Once inside, we saw that we weren’t the only hikers around.  Drop Top and Bear Bait were there.  They were planning on heading back out of town today.

It was a really cool feeling being in Maine with one of the hikers (Drop Top) who we had met in Georgia, before we even started the AT.  We were sad to realize that we would most likely never see them again.

The other hiker that was still around from the very beginning was Salty Camel.  As we were eating at the pub, we saw him walk into town with a group of hikers.  It crazy how the hiker “deck of cards” was always shuffling.

While we ate, we were also looking for a place to stay.  We found a place located across town, so after saying, “See you down the trail”, to Drop Top and Bear Bait, we made our way over to it.

We passed one sign that said we were halfway between the Equator and the North Pole (the 45th parallel).  We had started in Georgia, and now we were seeing signs that referenced the North Pole.  Weird.

When we got to the Motel we realized the place had been very undersold in the guide book.  Not only did they have canoes we could use, the place was right on the lake!

The room that we got also had a small kitchen/ dinning room in it!

In the end, it was probably better that we didn’t get a bunk at the hostel.  The hostel was nice, but it wasn’t right on the lake!

When the rain stopped, I took out one of the kayaks, and explored around the lake a little.  It was still a cool out, so I wore my rain clothes to cut the wind, and to keep dry while in the Kayak.  It worked out great.

 

Around dinner time, the Tramily went over to eat at an Italian restaurant.  The restaurant was packed with families out on vacation, so it took a while to get the food.

After dinner we went over to the local ice cream shop.  Standing there, eating ice cream with a lot of vacationers, almost made it feel like we were vacationing there too.  Technically, I guess we were.  We just took a heck of a route to get there.

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