Here is the journal of Jim's next two days:
Tues., Oct., 3
- This was the coldest morning yet, with the temperature just
28 degrees at 7:00 a.m. A solid layer of frost coated the car windshield. Our
hosts at the B&B prepared a scrumptious breakfast of fresh fruit and crepes
and we obliged by eating as much as we could. By 8:45 I was walking down the
main street of Cherryfield, wearing long pants and a fleece jacket for warmth.
Although a tad chilly, it was really a delightful morning, with the sun shining
brightly. Soon the temperature had risen enough that I could remove the jacket
and tie it around my waist.
The cold nights and mornings are hastening the changing of
leaf color. It seems the maples are becoming more red every day, and more of
them are falling to the ground as I pass by them. For the first several hours, the
DST ran parallel to U.S. Route 1 and just about 50-100 feet away, so vehicular
noise was my companion this morning. But not ATVs, as just one went past.
Yesterday and today I saw several remnants of a by-gone era:
very old telegraph posts, some with wires still attached, apparently left over
from when the telegraph was a vital communications link for the railroads.
Most of the posts are long gone, perhaps rotted away and blown over into the
underbrush, or no longer visible because the forest has grown around them. So
just a few are left to be seen by those of us traveling on this old rail bed.
Today’s hike is a relatively short one, just 12.5 miles that
will take me four hours to travel. Jane met me two hours after I had started so
we could drive to the nearby Subway for a lunch sandwich. Our meeting spot was
a cemetery located adjacent to the trail. After buying lunch and returning to
the cemetery, I swapped my hiking pants for shorts and my nearly worn out
sandals for new ones. Less than two hours later she met me again at another
road-trail intersection. I had just finished my sandwich at a picnic table
conveniently located along the trail.
Two weeks ago I commented in this journal about the profusion
of wildflowers along the roads I walked that week. What a difference from this
week, when nearly all the flowers are gone. Only the last few goldenrods and
some blue asters remain. Like the maple leaves, the flowers are saying that the
season is fast changing.
With today’s mileage, I am now over halfway through this hike’s
final week. Now just three more days of walking remain, until we get to the
border town of Lubec and the bridge from there to Campobello Island and Canada.
Miles Today - 12.5 Total Cumulative Miles - 206
Wed., Oct. 4
- How blessed I am this week – it’s another super day for
hiking the trail and enjoying all the beauty nature has to offer. Breakfast at
the local restaurant was the bargain meal of this entire trip: we each ordered a
fried egg, bacon or sausage, and toast, all for less than $7 for the two of us!
Miles Today - 15.5 Total Cumulative Miles - 221.5
By 9:00 a.m. we were back at the trail, and today Jane
decided to walk with me for a bit. She snapped a picture of a telegraph pole that
I had described yesterday. I would see many more on my hike today, most in a
pretty dilapidated state. The footing on this short stretch of the trail was
pretty decent, so she had no trouble with it. After 15 minutes she said “go
with God” and was walking back to the car. I could now accelerate to my usual
pace, but glad to have shared the DST with her for a while.
Today’s hike was filled with streams and wetlands, great for
wildlife and super for viewing wildlife. As I approached a bridge over a good
sized flowing stream, I heard some splashing activity in the water. Coming
closer I saw two otters frolicking in the water, taking turns diving underwater
and then emerging (this is why Jim needs to have a smart phone with him - this picture would have been fabulous). They were only about 25 feet away, so I got a good view of
these great swimmers. Whatever they were doing (hunting for breakfast?) they
seemed to be enjoying themselves and not at all concerned that they had a
spectator nearby.
I assume all this water and swampy land is prime moose
territory, so I kept looking for one of those
large creatures. I did see, for the first time on this trip, plenty of
moose prints in the loose gravel – apparently they like to hike the trail too!
Moose prints are quite distinctive, nothing else is similar. But alas, no moose
sightings were on my agenda today.
When
we parted this morning, I told Jane to look for me in
the small town of Whitneyville around 12:40, giving me 3:40 to hike 12
miles.
She was planning to spend some time at the Porter Memorial Library in
Machias. And right at that time, I arrived to see her in the trailside
parking lot. Just
moments earlier I had seen a large snake in the middle of the trail, so
we
backtracked to take its picture, but it was gone. A four-mile drive got
us to a
highly rated restaurant in downtown Machias, where we enjoyed a fine
lunch of
lobster and fried clam rolls. I really needed the mid-day break today as
my
left foot has become quite painful, and even two ibuprofen pills
mid-morning
didn’t seem to take care of it. But lunch and a one-hour rest did the
trick and
I was pain-free this afternoon. Four more miles of trail hiking and I
was done
for the day by 3:00 pm. Coincidentally, the finish spot was at an old
train
station right across the street from where we had eaten lunch two hours
earlier.
For the next two days, the remainder of this hike, I will be
walking the roads. I have enjoyed hiking over 50 miles on the Down East Sunrise
Trail, but beyond Machias it is not a practical route to get to Lubec. As mentioned
earlier this is a popular off-road route for ATVs, but surprisingly not for
cyclists. This, despite the fact that it is the longest continuous off-road
piece of the East Coast Greenway, the 3000 mile bike trail from Florida to Maine. But the surface of the DST is too
rutted and stony and too sandy in places to be a great route for bicycles. So ATVs
and snowmobiles in the winter are the main users of the trail.
Tonight we are staying in another B&B. This one is called
the Riverside Inn and naturally it is on the banks of a tidal river. As I write
this, the tide is coming in and it looks like the water is flowing upstream.
Pictures:
Day 14 - Tuesday Morning Leaving our Great B&B
Day 15 - Old Telegraph Pole Along Downeast Sunrise Trail
Day 15 - Off Jim Goes After Jane Turned Around
Day 15 - Beautiful Bookcase at Machias Library
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