Today the trail gave us great weather, easy hiking, and very few scenic vistas. For much of the day, we felt like we were on automatic pilot, if the Appalachian Trail had such a thing. Not to say the day was boring – the woods were too pretty for that – but it seemed a shame to waste the cloudless skies on so few overlooks of distant peaks.

Susan had us out to the barricade for our 12-minute walk back to the AT by 6:40 a.m. The first mile up to the Crocker Cirque Campsite was a steady uphill, but afterwards, the next mile up to South Crocker Mountain was the only really steep climb of the day, allowing us to work up a sweat even in the breezy 40° temperatures. We descended several hundred feet from 4,040′ before climbing up to 4,228′ and the North Crocker summit. Again, it would have been nice to have a view from among all the evergreens…

The next five miles was a gradual downhill (well, maybe a little steeper at the end) with few landmarks along the way. After arriving at ME 27, we continued on about another mile until we crossed Stratton Brook Pond Road, the last road before the Bigelows. As Suz was still off dropping food for us in Caratunk and Monson, we had to hitch back to the motel. A Maine state worker out checking on beaver activity met us as he turned around on the little traveled dirt road (what luck!), and gave us a ride back to ME 27. There we had a 20-minute wait for a hitch, our longest of our entire trip, as two out of every three passing vehicles were log trucks, and the rest swung to the center of the road to avoid us like we had leprosy. Finally, a college professor retired locally from Kleenex’s home state of South Dakota stopped on his way to the grocery across the street from our motel (again, what luck!).

A remarkably easy day that seemed like a working zero, putting us on the edge of 2,000 miles and allowing us to wrap up all our town chores before hiker midnight. With the weather forecast great for the next three days, we are eager to get back in the woods to climb our next to the last 4,000′ peaks…

Note to our friend Don Rogers: With our iPhones fully charged, we were able to add a few more pictures to September 7, 8, and 9. Although they still don’t do justice to those three days, we hope you will enjoy. Thanks for following us along. You are more involved than some of our relatives!