We got up fairly early and headed to Mount Washington. You can read about our trip up the mountain here. This was the point when the weather finally turned nice during our trip. While it was cold on the top of Mount Washington, it wasn’t raining, and we didn’t get too much rain from here on.
After visiting the top of Mount Washington (Ryan’s 44th highpoint), we made a quick side trip to visit the Glen Ellis Falls on the Glen Ellis river, which is just a few miles from the access road to the top of Mount Washington. Our guide recommended it, and the quick hike was definitely worth the view:
From the falls, we drove to Bangor, Maine. As part of the trip, I had arranged four book talks. One of them was with the Downeast Humanists and Freethinkers in Ellsworth, ME. When I made the arrangements, the leader of the group sent out an email to the members of the group announcing my visit and noting that I was planning on doing some hiking while I was in Maine. One of the members of the group, Rick Eason, a professor at the University of Maine, noted my interest in hiking and emailed to ask if I’d be interested in staying with him and his wife and wondered if I wanted someone to hike Mount Katahdin with. It was such an amazing offer I was kind of astonished, but Rick and his wife Maryanne are just that generous. Turns out that they have two grown sons who are no longer at home, so they had some spare rooms and they started using couchsurfing.org as a way to save money (they are probably the only people on the planet who are cheaper than we are). I looked him up and he seemed nice enough, so I accepted his offer and we made arrangements. We drove straight to his place, which is a nice, secluded home on several hundred acres, though it’s still close to the University of Maine. He and his wife were incredibly gracious hosts. They had dinner almost ready when we got there and we discussed plans to hike Mount Katahdin the next day. We had a delicious dinner and chatted for a while, then went to bed so I would be well-rested for the hike the next day.
Oh, and visiting Maine meant I had finally visited all 50 states (Debi probably has too, but she hasn’t been keeping track).
daily mileage: 188; total mileage: 2,174
states visited: Maine (making all 50 states visited for Ryan and probably Debi too); total state count: 14 (plus 1 district)
