Easy Walker

Sunday, September 2, 2012:

All the real tough action today happened off the trail.  The hike itself was nearly all easy walking.

The excitement?  Last night driving into Millinocket to check it out I got a flat tire.  Thank goodness for the tire pressure sensor and my dash-board display!  Thank goodness I carry a can of liquid flat repair stuff and a hand pump.  With the help of those two things I made it into Millinocket where I was just too tired and lazy to change the tire.  In the morning I pumped again, drove around, still unwilling to try to change the tire myself, and found that every one of the four possible repair places, including an auto dealership, would be closed until Tuesday.  So I got a huge breakfast at McDonalds (my first hot meal since July 19th, believe it or not), pumped some more, and headed to the trail.

That meant a late start - 10AM.  But the trail was so easy that I still got my minimum planned distance done - about 7.5 miles of new trail.  I did have a little climbing over Little Boardman Mountain where there were some decent views back toward White Cap (socked in with cloud today - so I felt very fortunate to have the fantastic views I did yesterday).   But other than that climb to barely over 2000 feet elevation, I was in the flat passing Mountain View Pond, and later walking an old road in the lowlands following Cooper Brook.  I got to see Cooper Brook Falls - more of a 'rapids' than a falls, in front of the Lean-To by the same name.  I got to see the long sand beach at Crawford Pond - kind of a grainy granite sand, but inviting nevertheless.  And other than that, there wasn't much to talk about or show via photos.

More hand-pumping of the pancake-flat tire got me back to Millinocket and all those closed auto repair shops, but an open grocery store.  The leak is slow enough that I'll probably live with this pump-hike-pump-drive-pump routine until the shops open on Tuesday.  The weather's just too good to take the time for anything but the essentials.  Wednesday might be rainy - I'll deal with off-trail hassles then.

Oh ... that photo up top?  Actaea pachypoda.  White baneberry, also called 'dolls eyes' because of the black spot at the end of the berry.  Deadly poisonous (causes cardiac arrest), but what a pretty trailside sight!

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Here's the map of today's hike, and a link to several more photos:

AT Day 222 - Crawford Pond at EveryTrail
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