Day 117 Hawks and Ferries

June 19, 2024

Today we took a ferry across the Kennebec River and hiked 26.5 miles.

I slept great last night. I even slept through my alarm. I woke up at 7 when Spencer pulled down the food bags and put mine outside my tent. We started hiking at 8.

For most of the day we walked through woods and over roots.

We passed a couple lakes and ponds including East and West Carry ponds which have some interesting history. We stopped for lunch at a sandy beach on East Carry pond.

After lunch we saw a mother duck and her ducklings.

We had more woods walks and some interesting stream crossings in the afternoon.

There was a section of trail where a lot of other hikers had told us an aggressive goshawk had been swooping down and attacking people. A few hikers had close calls, and a couple others were cut by its talons. As we approached the area where the hawk nested, a southbound hiker told us that he had just been attacked and managed to tag the bird with his trekking pole. Hopefully this put the hawk off attacking people. We didn’t see it, but walked through the area with our trekking poles held over our heads, listening carefully for the hawk’s war cry. The last thing we want is to be hospitalized over a stupid bird.

Around 4:15 we reached the shores of the Kennebec River. We had arranged for a local fishing guide to come with a canoe and ferry us across the river. We could have swam/forded the river but it is known to rise quickly with dam releases and a couple hikers have drown in the past. Although the 20$ each was steep, it was worth it to cross the river safely.

On the other side of the Kennebec is the small town of Caratunk ME. We asked our ferryman if there was any restaurants nearby and he offered to drive us to one about 2 miles down the road. It was 5PM and we were hungry. So we went to the Kennebec River Brewing Company for dinner. We both had massive burgers.

Our waitress recognized us as northbound thru hikers immediately. I asked her if she had hiked much of the trail before and she said she thru hiked the whole thing last year. As we were finishing up dinner she offered to drive us back to the trail so we wouldn’t have to hitch. We of course accepted. We were back on trail at 6PM with 7 more miles to hike.

To finish out the day we went filled up water at a shelter that had 5-6 southbound thru hikers. Then we climbed up Pleasant Pond Mountain. The ascent was easy and it was sunset as we reached the top.