I heard a moose last night right where we watched sunset from, but when I turned on my light and unzipped my tent it ran away. At 4:30 I woke up to the sound of a fishercat call, by the time I was awake enough to realize what it was, I was too awake to get back to sleep.
I made a coffee and watched the pond as it got lighter, it was too cloudy for a sunset, but the pond was still beautiful.
Today was a rather quick day, we needed to be at the food drop at 3, but we were told the 7 miles before it was really easy and fast.
We had an early lunch at Crawford pond and I was able to go for a swim. A lady there told us that someone was going trail magic with a full tent setup at Jo-Mary road, which is also where our food drop was. Beast no time and got packed up and headed out to try and get food before they packed up. I took another dip and stopped at a waterfall along the way, but I didn’t doddle as much as I usually would.
They weren’t wrong, those 7 miles went fast! I made it to the food drop before 2, the guy from shaws asked if I was Pete and I said yes, the he asked if Beast wasn’t far behind. Turns out she flew right past him on her way to the cookout! The magic included sausages on buns, steaks, beers, sodas, chips, cookies and even some weed (which is legal now in Maine). It was delicious and we hung around for a while. Eventually Beast decided to get going, she wanted to make it to the next lean to so there would be less hiking tomorrow. The mosquitoes were unbelievably bad in this section. I wanted to stay by the lake. We hiked to Antlers campsite where I took a other swim. It’s a beautiful campsite on the lake and I thought about staying, but there was mention in Guthooks (the app I use for the AT) saying there was a sandy beach on the other side with stealth camping. A dandy beach sounded better for swimming, and that would be even closer so I decided to check it out.
The sandy beach was much better for swimming, but the camping wasn’t as good, there was another couple, who were also at the cookout, staying right on the beach. I went for another good swim and sat on the sun for a while, what a fantastic location!. I considered leaving the couple alone, but I didn’t really want to camp at the lean to in the woods and I wasn’t about to hike 2 miles back to antlers camp just to hike it again in the morning, so I set up camp.
