Day 154 Abol Bridge to The Birches Lean-to

Today's miles 9.9.  AT miles 2180.1

Our penultimate day on the trail.  We took our time getting ready this morning, we didn't have a big mileage day and left camp at 8:30.  I was feeling slightly better and had a bit more energy after managing to eat properly last night.  It was as another pretty flat day trail wise, a slight uphill on the second half.  Early on we entered Baxter State Park where we registered to stay at The Birches Lean-to/Campsite at Katahdin Stream Campground, it only holds twelve people and is exclusive to north bound thru hikers only.

We had one river ford today across the Nesowadnehunk Stream.  We crossed it twice but managed to rock hop the second crossing.  We arrived at Katahdin Stream Campground at 1pm and signed in at the ranger station there before heading to the Birches Lean-to.  There was only one tent platform which was already half taken by another guy but not really enough room for our tent too.   There were two four person Lean-to's so we set our tent inner up in one of the Lean-to's hoping it wouldn't get busy later and we have to move.  I was not sleeping in a shelter on our last night on trail without bug/mice protection.

Around three thirty we had a small thunderstorm and had rain showers into the early evening.   We went back to the ranger station around 4:30 during afternoon office hours to register our thru hike finish and get our thru hiker finish numbers.  We are thru hikers number 71 and 72 to finish this year.  Two other guys turned up later, so there were five of us in total at camp.

During the evening we had a visit from 'The End of Trail Angels', two hiker loving, trail magic ladies from Millinocket.  They arrived with pizza and donuts for us hikers which Nigel and the other guys enjoyed, I couldnt eat any.  They stayed a while chatting and took away all our rubbish for us too.  What fantastic ladies.

Tomorrows the big day, we summit Mount Katahdin and finish the trail!