After breakfast, we had a lot of organizing to do. We had slack pack bags, day pack bags, and food drop bags to label and drop off in the correct spots. Luckily, I'm a highly organized person! We got all our perspective bags in their proper places and got in the van to the trail head.
I'll say this: I am so glad we slackpacked today! Cause once again, the book was quite deceiving in its depiction of flat terrain. It was like New York. On steroids. (That's known as Maine) Lots of little ups and downs, relentlessly. Plus three river fords. On one ford, there was a rope that you could hold onto overhead as you walked across. The current was quite strong, so it was necessary to really hold tight. However, the rope was just a little to high for me, and my arms were overhead, as high as I could get, with just the tips of my toes barely touching the riverbed. I had to have Sub pull the rope down for me!
It was nice to be part of a group, once again, though. Professor, Peaches, Wilson, Mother Teresa, and Grizzly were nice to eat with, talk with, laugh with. We had first lunch near a nice waterfall, and had some mini food breaks after each river crossing.
After the third river crossing, we followed a side trail marked with pink tape to get our slack pack bags. Oh, so heavy! Just another .7 miles to the shelter. Subaru and I had talked about moving on past the shelter, but by the time we got there, it was 5:15. And we were tired. And then it started raining. So it was good that we stopped.
There was one guy in the shelter when we arrived, he had taken up half of the 6 person shelter for himself and his dog. He was a little taken back when we asked him to move his stuff to the side so we could sleep in the shelter. He was even more taken back when Wilson moved his dog's sleeping pad from the platform to the floor of the shelter. Did he really expect that we would go set up tents out in the rain so that his dog could sleep on the sleeping platform of the shelter? Yes, he did. Oh well.