Day 82: Monkey Trolls, Blueberry Crisp Gelato, Appalachian Trail

Day 82: Tuesday August 26th, 2014.

Orford, NH to Lincoln, NH. 44.6 miles.  

Up early hoping to avoid the heat of mid-day, I packed up and headed back to the market a few blocks down the road, knowing that they were serving up freshly made breakfast sandwiches in the morning.  I ordered 2, and sat down outside at the picnic table in the parking lot to eat breakfast before moving on.

While there, a touring cyclist pulls up and introduces herself.  "Hey, what's up?", she said with a cheery voice.  She was full of energy, and had already been riding for a bit this morning before arriving in Orford.  Claire was her name, and she seemed a bit quirky upon first meeting her, speaking a mile a minute.  Wearing blue and yellow "Cal" socks, she was a student from Berkeley that started her ride from the East Bay area of San Francisco.  She rode to Chico, then hopped on a train to Portland Oregon.  She was headed to Portland Maine.

I told her that the breakfast sandwiches were good.  She wasn't feeling good, having run into some guys that hosted her the night before, they were up drinking and partying late, and she was feeling it now.  "Maybe I should try to eat something.", she said.  She went inside to get a sandwich.

I was looking at her bike, and noticed she was carrying a few things beyond the typical touring gear.  A green sunflower whirligig, and a collection of what looked like plastic monkey and owl trolls.  "Wierd.", I thought to myself.

When she came out of the market, I asked her about the colorful and interesting accessories on her bike.  She told me she just found them in a pile of stuff outside a house with a sign that said "Free".  She decided to grab them, and her plan is to mail one each day to her best friend as a practical joke.  I laughed about that.

We talked for a short while until I finished my second sandwich.  By that time, she had just about finished her first and decided to join me since we were headed in the same direction.  

Leaving Orford, I looked to my left to see a neat bridge heading back to Vermont, the town of Fairlee just on the other side.  

We stayed on the New Hampshire side, following the Connecticut River towards North Haverhill.  On the way, Claire and I had some interesting conversations and it was fun, making the time fly by.  At the top of a hill, we came upon a pile of discarded "free" stuff at the edge of a yard, similar to the one Claire had raided earlier in the day.  Claire said, "Oh, let's stop - there's a hamster wheel!"  "What on earth are you going to do with a hamster wheel?", I asked her.

She apparently just wanted a picture with the wheel, and explained to me that she and her friends have compared her brain to a hamster wheel.  Only, instead of 2 to 3 hamsters running on the wheel in the same direction, her wheel has 85 hamsters trying to run on it, some being rotated up and falling on their backs against the others.  Other hamsters are flinging off the sides, holding on for dear life, puking from motion sickness, etc.  "It's chaos.", she said.  "But, over in the corner is a big Buddha hamster with a gong."

Every once in a while, she explained, the Buddha hamster will reach a tipping point and slam the hammer against the gong, knocking off all of the other hampsters and creating silence.  After having chatted with her up to this point, I thought the analogy of her brain being full of hampsters in a chaotic state was fitting.

She went back to the pile of junk to see what she could find.  "Check out the cool green frog!", she exclaimed.  I actually thought the frog was cool.  So I told her I would rescue him from the pile, and we'll see if we can find some kids along the way who might want him.  She did the same with a stuffed dinosaur, squeezing it in alongside her other trinkets.

We made it the rest of the way to North Haverhill.  By this point, while I wasn't really hungry, I knew I needed to eat before moving on, knowing that there was another big ascent ahead.  We stopped at a market to grab something to eat.  The clerk recommended the locally-made gelato in the freezer.  I picked up a small container of "Blueberry Crisp" gelato.

I also had bread, almond butter, honey, and other food in my pack that I planned to put together into a lunch.  Back outside, sitting on the ground against the building was Sarah, the cyclist I ran into at Hot Biscuit!  She was taking a break, on the phone talking to a friend.

By now, it was hot outside, and the front of the store was being blasted by the sun.  With no shade right nearby, Claire and I rode down the street and a few blocks along the route to a shady area to eat lunch.  Sarah caught up with us and joined our picnic.  We shared the food we had and it turned out to be a great lunch.  I still had some fresh blueberries from the day before that I added to my gelato and to my almond butter and honey sandwich.  It was fantastic.

From here, we began a steep climb, one of two, the second more steep and taller, on our way to the town of Lincoln, NH.  We passed by Haverhill Middle School.

Along the way, I noticed several low rock walls around the perimeter of land parcels.  These were old walls that were the product of the original settlers clearing the fields of rocks.  Some of the rocks were fairly big, requiring livestock and ropes to move into place.

The walls were impressive, sometimes quite long, and common.

I stopped to take a picture of a neat old barn with forested hills in the background.

By this point, I had broken away from both Sarah and Claire.  I made a steep descent having made it over the first climb, and turned right following the Wild Ammonoosue River, starting the second and much more challenging ascent.

I often wave to the drivers of cars passing by.  I did the same as a white jeep passed me.  I noticed that the jeep slowed down and made a u-turn.  The car then passed me going my direction and turned into a driveway.  A guy got out of the car and crossed the street to my side of the road.  "Hi. My name is Paul.", he said.  Then he asked, "How is your tour going?"  I spoke with him for a little while.  Then, he told me he had just visited a local apple grower and he has a bunch of apples.  And, he also had choloate milk on ice from a local dairy farm.  "Are you interested?", he asked me.  "Sure, I'll take an apple.", I told him. 

A few minutes later, Claire and Sarah catch up, and they partake in the apples and chocolate milk as well.  Paul volunteers with the organization that puts together the bicycle race up and over Mount Washington.  He's an advocate, and loves to help people whenever he can.  What a great guy he is, going out of his way to make other people happy.   

We all thanked him and continued up the road, working harder now to make it over the next big pass, but energized from the chocolate milk and delicious apples.

We separated out at our own pace again, with steep mountain walls in front of us, some with exposed rock faces.  

The exposed rock in road cuts was heavily deformed, and old.

It was hot, and the steep ascent had me breathing hard and looking for a spot to rest.  I saw a viewpoint sign ahead, and turned off into a parking lot with a beautiful lake.  Claire was right behind me, and followed suit.  Sarah reached us a few minutes later, and we all took a break in this pristine place.

Sarah was really hot and decided she was going to swim out to the rock in the distance.  She was raving about the great water temperature and how refreshing it was, convincing Claire and I to do the same.  It really was just what we all needed to cool off before finishing the climb.

After drying off, we jumped back on the bikes to make the final push up and over the pass.  Little did we know, we were just a short distance from the crest already.  At the lake, we were practically there.  We all laughed about it, thinking we had a long way to go, when in reality there was hardly any climbing left to do.  At the crest, the famous Appalachian Trail crosses the road.

From here, we descended 1000 feet to the town of Lincoln.  Lincoln sits at the base of the largest of the mountains on my route in the Adirondack/Green Mountain region.  The elevation profile for what lies ahead was the most intimidating of climbs I would have to face, more so than the dreaded Middlebury Gap near Bread Loaf, known as the Kancamangus pass, referred to by locals as "The Kanc", at 2,855 feet.

My plan was to get dinner in Lincoln, then climb just 3 miles up en route to the Kanc, to a campground just out of town. This would position me in a prime spot for conqueroring the Kanc tomorrow, first thing early in the day when I am the least fatigued.

Sarah and Claire decided to do the same.  We ate dinner at a Chinese restaurant in town, then headed up the 3 miles to the campground.  I was a bit nervous about the climb tomorrow, having been really challenged by Middlebury Gap, and now being faced with what looks from the profile to be a climb of much greater difficulty.