Caratunk, ME

Ah, the luxury of a wooden cot, electric light, walls (albeit canvas) and a door! These finer things in life are provided by our cabin tent at Northern Outdoors resort in Caratunk. Since arriving here yesterday we've eaten a couple of very good meals, done laundry, taken several showers, and repaired some gear issues. My air mattress had developed a leak in the past couple of days, very slow at frist, but accellerating to two hours to deflation on our last night out. It was getting uncomfortable So I took the mattress in the shower with me this afternoon, looking for an air bubble. To my horror it appears that something has happened inside the seams of the baffles, every baffle had an eight inch or so line of bubbles indicating air loss! I've ortdered a new mattress. After our long layover in Monson I can't justify waiting here for it, so it will be delivered to our next town stop. I guess I'll just be haing some sleepless nights until then. I'll try to stay out of the shelters until then, the ground is at least a little softer than the wooden shelter floors.

The hike from Monson was good, but very hot. We finally had a predominantly hot sunny days, though still with some late day rain. The water levels in the rivers has gone down a lot in the time we were in Monson. We had heard some horror stories from NOBOs about the several large streams we would have to ford on the stretch, but by the time we came through they were not much of a challenge at all.

The two summits between Monson and here were entirely different experiences for us. We thoroughly enjoyed Moxie Bald, it was warm, sunny, breezy and bug free! We spent several hours at the top enjoying the sun and breeze and the lack of bugs. When we finally left and got down out of the sun and breeze we both realized that maybe we had spent a little too much time up there and were rather sunburned. Brian is suffering more than me, maybe becasue I had more of a base tan in the first place,and have spent more time hiking shirtless than Brian. Pleasant Pond mountain, though a couple of hundred feet lower than Moxie Bald, was much more drawn out on the north (up) side and extremely steep on the downward southern side. Just to add some difficulty there is no surface water for almost the entire 6 miles of mountain and we must have picked the hottest day of the year so far to hike it! We finally made it down off the mountain went straight into the lake for a cooling swim and wash off. I'm glad we did as we just got finished setting up our tent and tarp when the sky started pouring rain.

Our final morning's hike into Caratunk was fuelled by the promise of a cheeseburger and icecream as our guidebook said. Unfortunately after arriving there we were advised that the restaurant had closed down several years ago! Fortunately, as we set off back again in the opposite direction on the road to the campground a nice couple stopped us to chat about our hike and agreed to drive is to Northern Outdoors. The air conditionned ride and arrival at the bar/restaurant for a good meal before we even checked into our cabin made up for the disappointment.

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