Good morning sunshine. It did rain last night and my tent was soaking wet. The worst part was my sleeping bag was also wet. Not sure if that’s just from condensation or I had a small leak inside of my tent. Anyway you look at it, it wasn’t a good way to start the morning.

However, Tim, saved the day. He was ready for the hungry hikers with assorted berry pancakes, more like crapes, sausage, and eggs with orange juice. Me and blue shared the pancakes and we still couldn’t finish them. Each hiker had a stack of ten! After breakfast, we headed down the trail for the Kennebec River.

The Kennebec River is the biggest river on the Appalachian Trail that must be forded. The only way to ford the river is by waiting for the water ferry that runs from 9 AM to 2 PM. Today was Justin’s first day taking hikers across the river. A disclaimer on FarOut app states: ATTENTION: Do not attempt to wade or swim across the Kennebec River. Dam releases upstream may cause sudden and rapid changes in water depth and current. Two hikers are known to have drowned and others have had near misses fording the river. As for the AT Purists: The official route of the A.T. across the Kennebec is the ferry service. So the Ferry is the only way.

Blue and I arrived and there were four hikers and a dog waiting. Being that only 1-2 hikers go across at a time, and there are southbound hikers waiting on the opposite side, this is a waiting game. By 10am, Blue and I were escorted across by Justin, who was quite competent. We did not even need to lift up an oar as he had the canoe pointed in the right direction. About 5-10 minutes later, we were on the other side. We grabbed our packs and off we went.

Within a few minutes, we ran into Slips and Snickers, doing Trail Magic. Slips had a bunch of fruit, including oranges, bananas, and watermelon. She also had cold drinks and vegetables with dip. She was a hiker herself back in 2022 and obviously knows what the hikers want. We loaded up on fruit and Blue started talking with Snickers.

Ends up that Snickers husband is a Hiking the trail also and she is supporting him. Blue asked if there was a possibility. If we paid her, could she slack pack us? Snickers was more than happy and did not want our money. She would drive our backpacks to our ending location at Moxie Pond. She was a little nervous with dropping off the packs at the trailhead, but we convinced her that nobody wanted to carry our burdens. Just leave a note that these packs belong to Geisha and Blue, and Norman will guard them. And that’s exactly what she did.

The rest of the day was slackpacking. It was a darn good thing because I had no energy. We still had another 12 miles to go, and a very light daypack. You would think that the miles would come easy. especially after all these days that I’ve been on the trail. But I am just beat tired. We stopped to have lunch around 1pm and then continued on to a creek crossing where we could fill up on water. Blue filtered and so did I. We carried on for the rest of the afternoon.

We had a easy climb up Pleasant Peak and that was our only ascent all day. In theory, I should’ve been flying down the mountain but instead I was slowly plotting down the dirty mess. There’s still so much mud and muck, that it really slows down our travel.

When I left the creek shortly after Blue, I ran into 7 to 8 males who were carrying an ice chest to Pleasant Pond. They had flip-flops on and were sliding all over the mud and muck. They said that they do this all the time, but they’ve never seen conditions like this. Each one of them carried a large beach chair on their shoulders. They asked me what I was doing on the trail and I told them that I was hiking the Appalachian Trail. They were so impressed that they gave me a beer. I told them that I would love to take the beer but I would not drink it until I got to camp tonight at Moxie Pond. Great, they are going to Moxie Pond too. I never saw them again but I had my beer to share with Blue.

When Blue and I got to the top of Pleasant Peak, Blue found a plethora of blueberries on top. She was picking and devouring so many that her tongue turned blue. It’s really hard to stop eating these delicious morsels and we really need the antioxidant’s out here. But reality is, we still had quite a few miles to go, so slowly but surely, we left the mountain and headed down to Moxie Pond.

I think I would rather have an ascent or climb at the end of the day rather than a downhill. My knees were talking to me, and they were not excited about this downhill slide to Moxie. It was a little over 5 miles, and it took me until close to 6 PM before I finally made it. Blue was waiting for me. There was a note attached to our bags from Snickers. Norman was taking care of our packs and made sure that no unsuspecting criminal would take them. I don’t think anybody wants to mess with my bag as it stinks to high heaven and there’s really nothing in there that is worthy of someone stealing. The funny is that when Snickers was placing our bags. Someone recognized Norman. He’s famous! I’ve seen him on Couch to Trails Vlog. Snickers had no idea that she was relocating the Movie Star of the Year. Seems like Norman is getting quite the reputation out here.

When I saw Blue, I told her that I was going to pop open the Light Blue Beer from Canada that I got from the boys. We sat down rock and shared our beverage. It hit the spot and gave me the energy to go to the next distance to our camp. On our way down a gravel road, we met a couple of guys that were fishing off the dock on Moxie Pond. They had Oreo cookies that they wanted to share with us and I was much obliged to take them take up their offer. They had just caught a bass and we’re working on getting more fish. We continued on the road and found a nice flat spot to pitch our tents. Just so happened that the sheriffs vehicle was parked right near where we camped. That makes me feel extra specially safe for the night.

What a day of gratefulness. From the sun shining in the early morning, to Tim cooking breakfast for us all, to Justin paddling Blue and I safely across the Kennebec River, Slips providing trail magic, Snickers delivering our packs ten miles up trail so we could slackpack, the Men who gave me Light Blue Beer and the fisherman who offered us Oreo’s. What a day indeed. God had this all planned out because He knew I would be exhausted from all the days prior. What a wonderful, magnificent and mighty Lord I serve!