Almost to Quebec

I'm in Kedgwick NB on the Restigouch river. This is my last town before Quebec. I have 60 miles to canoe down the river and then I'll be in Medipedia QC. I'm glad too, I'm so tired of walking on roads. Also hurricane Bill is coming on Sunday and it is supposed to bring with it some pretty bad weather. Hopefully I'll be off the river by then!
From left to right is Becky, Mrs. Miller, Miss Donna, and Bill. Becky is Bill's girlfriend and Donna is a friend of Mrs. Miller. Between Riley Brook and Mt. Carlton the Miller family lives. Bill Miller is a third generation hand made canoe builder. He is famous in the area and North America. People come from all around to buy his canoes. They are lovers of hikers and let me stay the night and cooked me dinner and breakfast. Bill is also the self proclaimed mayor of Nictau and puts on a music festival every year called "fiddlers on the Tobique" it involves 1600 musicians in canoes floating down the river while 5000 people watch and party. It sounds like a REALLY fun time. It will take place next June if anyone is interested in going.

Bill cuts all his own timber and mills all his own wood. He is a genius with wood working. This is his new cabin he built himself. He has done 90% of the work himself. It is a gorgeous cabin.

Bill's grandfather, before becoming a canoe maker, owned a hotel in the area. Apparently in the 1920's and 1930's it was the place to go in NB. When they tore the place down bill got this door. Many famous people have touched this door: Babe Ruth, L.L. Bean, And a bunch of others that I can't remember now. But I touched it too.

This is the view from Mt. Carlton looking at Mt. Head and Sagamook. Carlton is the highest mountain in New Brunswick at 2693ft. It's really not very tall compared to the mountains we've been on so far. Also it was kind of sad because the park that surrounds the mountain is surrounded itself by logging companies. So past the park boundary all I could see was bald patches where they'd logged. They are required to replant cut trees. The locals I've talked to do not like the limber company. The company only re-plants soft wooded fur trees that grow quickly. They harvest all the hardwoods they can but do not replant them. A mature hard wood takes 100-500 years to grow so they feel it's not worth it to plant them. Also the locals used to have access to the forest but now the lumber company has cut that access. It is amazing how much land the lumber company's own here, millions of acres.

Me on top of Carlton.

This is 80 plus cords of wood used to make fires to boil maple sap into syrup. This is at Albert's camp. He has access or owns 120,000 maple trees he taps every year. He has a crew of 20 men. At his camp he had a nice cabin.

This is Albert's cabin. He built it when he was 27 years old in 1974. He spends a lot of time here especially int he winter. His home is in St. Quentin NB. Albert picked me up on the road yesterday and let me stay at his camp. The cabin is on a small pond in the forest. It was so beautiful and peaceful. I'm pretty sure this cabin was 800-900 sq ft. It was huge. I had a really good time with Albert. He said he only knew a little English but really he knew a great deal.

This is Albert as he's dropping me off at St. Quentin. He only has 1 full finger on his left hand. He cut the others off when he was 30 with a saw. He saved me about 25km of road walking in total. Albert is VERY generous and promises to keep in touch.

This is a recycling center in the smallestof towns called St. Martin. It probably has a population of 200 people. I was amazed that even the smallest of villages has a recycling program. I love Canada.

6th day on the trail!

I'm in Plaster Rock, New Brunswick currently. I've gone something like 150 miles so far. So far the IAT (International Appalachian Trail) has been a little disappointing. I've been on roads 80% of the time and ATV tracks the rest. The land scape is nice but not beautiful. I guess I'm jaded by the AT. Also it has been about or above 90 degrees every day since Wednesday. I'm now drinking 5-6 liters of water a day compared to my normal 2 liters a day. It doesn't help that I'm exposed on the roads and tracks, there is no more "green tunnel" like on the AT.

This is Simon, he's from Quebec. He is probably the first and last thru-hiker on the IAT I will see. He is planning on going all the way to Mt. Springer in Georgia. I met him in Houlton, ME.

This is Mars Hill in Maine. It is by far the tallest thing around and it is only 1580 ft. It has a 27 wind generator farm on it. Apparently the community is filing a class action law suite against the farm for not being sufficiently notified about the farm and the excessive noise it causes. Also they claim the farm has caused their real estate value to drop.

This area of Maine produces 20% of the potatoes produced in the USA.

This is my brand new tarp tent. It is SO nice and light. It is much larger than our old tent and less than half the weight.

The next morning after that last picture I woke up to find this guy in the camp ground. Luckily he was more interested in rooting out grubs then spraying me.

I had to walk about 12 miles along the U.S. Canadian border. They had these markers every 1/4 mile. I illegally entered Canada to take the picture of the Canadian side.

I found this paw print by my tent in the morning...Just kidding. This was in some dried mud along the border. He was a pretty small bear, probably a yearling.

There are two banes of my existence along the IAT, mosquitoes and beavers. Along the border I came across this beautiful beaver swamp. They had dammed a small stream and flooded the border. I started to cross and quickly found I was waist deep in mud and water. I had to scramble across the ill constructed beaver dam to get past it.

Just when I thought I was past the beaver dam I fell into knee deep mud that I could not get out of. I kept sinking slowly. I finally grabbed a stick and used it to pull my right foot free. Then I stood on it with my right foot while I pulled my left foot out. It took a lot of effort to free myself. Then I still had to cross more bog and mud. This picture shows the entire beaver calamity. I think it was about 1/4 mile long. It took me 30 minutes to get past it.

After the beaver incident I was totally wet and muddy. Thank the IAT angels, there was a BRAND NEW shelter only 1 mile further up. I stayed here that night and it was like coming home. This was exactly like the AT shelters, only nicer.

It even had a covered picnic table and privy.

Me looking cool. I smudged the lens so all the pics from here on out have this cool cloudy effect.

The Andover crossing into Canada! Apparently Canada doesn't really care about us coming in. The guard mostly chit chatted with me. He didn't even want to search my bag and didn't run my passport or want to stamp it. So I guess I only need a passport to get back into the U.S. they are the ones that care.

I'm all the way in Canada, as far as I could possibly be from the South, and here is a Confederate flag. Weird!

This is the Tobique (pronounced Toe-Bic) River. I walked along it for about 30 miles. It was very scenic. The only problem is it's a breeding ground for mosquitoes. They were HORRIBLE!

This is an eagle on the river. I'd like to think it's an osprey but I really couldn't tell at this distance.

I thought this sign was funny. I guess it's their "children at play" sign. It just looks too cartoonie for me. Also did you know that "cul-du-sac" means dead end street in French? I didn't.

Starting the International Appalachain Trail (IAT)

As I write this Sara has landed in Dallas and hopefully my sister picked her up at DFW. It was really hard to say good bye to her on Wednesday. I REALLY wanted her to hike the IAT with me. But her knees were really sore and she was ready to get home. She drove me to Baxter State Park on Wednesday morning and we said good bye. I'll be on the IAT for hopefully less than 45 days. I'm loading these pics so I can send the full memory card home.
I miss you and love you Sara.

MOOSE! this young moose was corssing the road this morning about 8am. There is 120 miles of road walk in Maine before I get to the real trail in Canada.

Shin Pond is the first town I've reached. I just like the sign stating "ice cold ice" genius!

We have thru-hiked the AT

We finished the trail!! It is such a surreal feeling. Now I am planning to head home, and Nick is going to continue with the International AT. He has about 700 miles to hike through Maine and Canada, and then he will end at the ocean.
Yoon, Boston, Stunned Mullet, me, and General getting ready to leave Stratton. Yoon is from South Korea and knows very little English. I have no idea how he has done the whole trail. It is really amazing! I also have no idea why he has his hand on Boston's knee.

Flagstaff Lake. I believe this is one of the four lakes in Maine that is actually man made. They flooded the town of Flagstaff to make this lake...of course they moved everybody out before the flood.

We made it 2,000 miles!!! We can now apply for our 2000 miler certificates.

The Kennebec River crossing. It is the only river crossing that we actually have to take a canoe across.

The ferry guy is taking Yoon and I across the river. It was kind of scary. The river was pretty high and moving really fast.

Blueberries!!! Wild blueberries and raspberries grow along the trail providing us a yummy treat.

Maine is very beautiful!

River crossings are good for one thing...cleaning the mud off my boots. My poor boots are looking pretty sad with holes all over them.

Yoon crossing one of the calmer rivers.

We have made it to the infamous 100-Mile Wilderness. There is a lot of hype about this section of trail because it is suppose to be the most remote of any section of trail on the AT. Ironically we found it had more hikers on it than we have seen in a long time, there were logging roads every little bit, and people were receiving better cell phone signal than they had in a long time.

The Barren Ledges on Barren mountain.

There she is Katahdin!! We have been walking towards that mountain for days upon days! We have 72 miles left at this point.

A snake eating a frog. The frog is puffed up so the snake is having a pretty hard time swallowing the frog.

We are getting closer to Katahdin. We only have 47 miles left now.

Pemadumcook Lake. We took a few seconds to admire this gorgeous lake. This was a new personal record mileage day for us...32.8 miles!

We made it out of the 100 mile wilderness alive! We were so lucky for this section. We had wonderful weather, and it only rained on us 1 day.

15 miles left at Abol Bridge.

Baxter State Park...we only have the last little bit now.

Boston eating cheerios and admiring the falls.

The rivers were stunning in the park. The water had a crisp, clear color to them. Too bad it was always a little too chilly to go swimming.

August 9th...this is the big day we are headed up the mountain. This is the view from the climb. The mountains have big granite faces. It is very pretty.

Katahdin was our biggest climb on the whole trail...more than 4,000 feet in 5 miles. Some parts were pretty steep, and we had to use bars to climb over the rocks.

View of all the lakes around.

We reached The Tableland. Only 1.5 miles left.

This is the last climb up. You can see the group of people waiting at the top.

We made it!!! What a beautiful day too! We were soooooo lucky to have such a sunny, clear day. Most finish pictures are in the clouds. We feel very fortunate.

There were 10 of us that finished the trail all at the same time. It was quite a moment to have us all up there. We have known most of these hikers a good portion of the way.

People try to be unique with their finish photo. Topo went a little overboard.

I couldn't get this picture to rotate, but it was too funny not to put on. Cajun Dave from Oklahoma is a hoot. He was always make us crack up at his facial expressions.

Here comes the 10th hiker...The General arrived late because his sister came to hike up with him and she has a slower pace.

From Baxter Peak (Katahdin) we went across this ridge called the knife's edge. In good weather it is a nice hike, but I would hate to do it in bad weather.

Lightning was the only other thru-hiker willing to go with us across the knife's edge. I think she was doubting her decision at times, but she did terrific. The other hikers didn't want to go because we had to go down a different trail and then hitch a ride back to the other side of the park to get our backpacks. They were more interested in getting down the mountain and going to town to eat and drink.

Looking down off the edge.

Climbing up the last peak...Pamola. Pamola is a god the Native Americans believe in. He protects this mountain. They described him as having the head of a moose, the body of a man and the wings and feet of an eagle. Pamola was both feared and respected by the Natives, and his presence was one of the main reasons that climbing the mountain was considered taboo. Good thing we are climbing it...ha ha.

Looking back after coming a little ways down the Herlon Taylor trail. What a day!!!

The General's mom paid for a suite at a hotel for us all to stay in and bought us all pizza. We were having a great time eating and hanging out with our trail family before we went our seperate ways.

Seagulls in the parking lot. We must be getting close to the ocean.

Saying good-bye this morning. Everybody is headed home...but Nick he still has miles to hike.

General's sister and mom, and Fortune's mom. They were soooo nice to us. Real trail angels!

We ran into Boston this afternoon. He had just finished the Sunday Summit Challenge. He ate 14 scoops of ice cream with 2 donuts and a king sized snickers in it in under 90 minutes. He won a free shirt and got to write his name on the wall. Very few people have been able to accomplish this feat. He had to throw up in the middle, but he got it all down. Way to go Boston!!