Day 141 ME17 to Piazza Rock Lean-to

Today's miles 15.  AT miles 1966.7

Back hiking today thankfully.  Travis the owner of The Rangeley Inn kindly gave us a ride back to the trailhead on the ME17.  We stopped on the way at a viewpoint looking back over Rangeley Lake towards Rangeley.  At the trailhead there was also another viewpoint looking over Mooselookmeguntuk Lake, both had amazing views.  Maine has loads of large beautiful lakes and ponds. 

We were hiking for 9:50. Luckily the trail today was pretty steady, hovering around the 2500ft mark, no big ascents and descents just little ups and downs to ease us (me) back in gently.  Nigel kindly took some extra weight off me today also, I am loads better but still not quite 100%.  We passed Sabbath Day Pond which was supposed to have a sandy beach area. It did but it was very small, I think the wind was blowing in the wrong direction blowing the water onto the beach area.  The water was also not very clean, we wouldn't have liked to swim in it.

Maine is renowned for having lots of tree rooty paths and also being quite boggy in places.  We certainly saw this today in lots of places but not all the trail is bad, there are some good sections.  The trail has dried out a lot in the last few days also, if we get some rain though it'll get much boggier.  We got some trail magic today at the ME4 road trailhead crossing, some Hershey chocolate bars from Lone Ranger and Special K, thank you guys. 

We reached our camp spot Piazza Rock Lean-to at 5:30 and set up our tent up on a platform.  This shelter has a two seat privy with a cribbage board between, I can't imagine wanting to share a privy let alone play a game in one!  Tomorrow we hit some bigger 4000ft mountain ranges again, we have seven to go over in the next three days.  This means some bigger and longer ascents and descents again, so we had an early night tonight ready for an earlier start tomorrow.  Once they're done though that's the last of the bigger mountains, the trail levels off a bit.  There's only one more significant mountain to climb in the hundred mile wilderness until we reach Mount Katahdin at the end.