After waiting over a month to hike again (recovering from heel bursitis), I was ready to north to Maine for another attempt to complete the AT. My father had offered to help me get more AT miles this summer and we'd been planning a week-long trip (that was going to begin today) since late May. Everything looked good until a few days ago, when one of my clients requested that I travel to Washington, DC for meetings on July 25. As a result, the whole idea seemed bad; I didn't expect my dad to drive up from Massachusetts (and then drive six hours to Maine) for so little resulting mileage. However, my dad told me he still wanted to see how many miles I could log in the truncated window. With the weather forecast looking pretty nice for the Hundred Mile Wilderness, I agreed. He arrived last night and stayed over at my condo so we could leave first thing this morning. However, I'd been racing to catch up with work yesterday so hadn't done a lot of packing. Fortunately, I was awake at about 0500 and was able to quickly get through several hiking trip preparations. It was raining really hard but I managed to get everything packed in my dad's RV pretty quickly. For this reason, we were able to leave Hanover at 0800. Since the RV isn't very fast, I suggested my dad again (like most of our previous trips) use NH-10 to reach Woodsville and then US-302 to get to Littleton. We stopped for breakfast at McDonalds there (0955) and then continued across I-93 to NH-116. We drove north to Jefferson and then got on US-2 (it stopped raining at about this time). After stopping for gas at Irving in Gorham (1115), we continued on US-2 to Farmington. My dad wanted to stop so that Ana could go for a walk so I found a nice park on the eastern side of town. Next, we tried to go north on ME-27 but encountered a huge traffic jam (due to a bad accident). Backtracking to Farmington, we instead, took ME-43 to get to ME-148. Along the way, we passed a huge new factory hiring event - my dad was impressed. We continued on what we thought was ME-43 but later figured out it was the wrong road. Using some back roads, we got back on track (ME-43) and continued northeast to ME-150. We got on ME-151 next and took another short break near Monson. After that, we got on ME-15 so we could reach Greenville. We stopped for gas at Irving in Greenville, ME (1630) and also got some groceries in the little market (I later learned it was affiliated with Hannafords). We talked to some "fan boys" (construction workers who were about to get on a boat to work on someone's vacation home on an island in Moosehead Lake) of RV before getting back on the road. My dad was impressed by the area (he'd never been there before) and constantly commented on the nice vacation homes we passed. Driving north on Lily Bay Road, we located Frenchtown Road (just before the town of Kokadjo) and then drove east (along the Roach Ponds). The condition of the road wasn't too bad and we saw even more impressive summer homes (with electric power lines) After a really long time (it seemed), we arrived at gate across the road that I had seen before (1830). The parking lot that would allow AT trailhead access (for White Cap Mountain, inside the KI / Jo Mary Multi-use Forest) the next morning was very close but we found a better place to park in a sand pit nearby. We then ate dinner (dehydrated meal) and I also drank a large Sam Adams Wicked Hazy I'd gotten in town. We spent the rest of the evening talking, reading and (re)packing. Both of us went to bed at 2130 - AT tomorrow!
