We had an awesome stretch of nice trails today, the longest since Vermont without crazy rocks or boulders or ridiculous climbs. Just some smooth uneventful miles, a welcome return to the way the trail was before northern New England. Well, that was most of the day anyway, just near the end we came to Sawyer Notch. To me Sawyer was much more “difficult” than Mahoosuc was a couple days ago. This was just a normal down into the notch and right up the other side, but both sides were steep. My knee is still taking a pounding on the downhills and the uphill had me out of breath several times, something very hard to do after almost 2000 miles on the AT. At least this one was kind of a trail and not just rocky steps – it was mostly root steps I guess instead of rock, and it was actually pretty warm this afternoon. The descent into the notch was about 1.5 miles and the climb was 0.8 but felt twice as long. I was quite glad to see the top.
Of course after that big climb up, the trail descends immediately again. This time at least to our final destinaion of the day – the road to Andover. It was a very quiet road, hardly any traffic at all, but we had successfully hitched a ride before I was even done stepping across the stream right next to the road. As soon as Miranda crossed ahead of me a single car approached, she put her thumb up and the car stopped. The guy even had a license plate that read ANDOVER. He was awesome and delivered us to Pine Ellis Lodging, our hostel for the night. As you might expect for western Maine, there isn’t much in town. Pretty much the hostel, a general store with a short order grill inside, and a post office. Pretty much all an AT hiker needs though. Since it was the last day between resupplies I had been a bit light on food during the day’s hike. I made up for it at the grill by devouring an order of mozzarella sticks, a 1/2 lb burger, a small side of fries, most of a 12 inch pizza, a bubblegum soda, a can of watermelon juice, and a bag of skittles.