June 30
End: ATV Trail, NB
Miles: 27.9
Total: 4210.3
I woke up but didn’t feel much like moving. Finally I got packed up and had a small breakfast with my hosts. I decided to walk the road instead of the border trail. The border trail was not great, and it was going to get waylaid by a gigantic beaver pond. Also, I just wasn’t feeling too good.
I had been experiencing diarrhea in the night and the morning. I thought at first it was just from the ill-advised Habanero cheese I had bought in Houlton, but now I wasn’t sure; that flooded stream water I drank seemed the likely culprit. As I walked the road I realized that I needed to get to the pharmacy in Fort Fairfield to get some medicine. I headed for the U.S. highway, and found that I only saw one or two cars on the way there, but I did see a small bear.
I tried to hitch. I don’t know if the people of Northern Maine are more suspicious of hitchhikers than the rest of the country, but I had no luck. I tried a few different spots, but got nothing. Hours passed and I wondered if I was even going to make it to the post office before they closed. Finally some one pulled over.
The guy in the truck was extremely suspicious of my hitchhiking activities, and for some reason didn’t think that extreme diarrhea was a good reason to not walk ten miles to Fort Fairfield. He made me lift my shirt to show him I wasn’t carrying any weapons, empty my pockets, then keep my hands where he could see them during the ride. I will not be visiting Maine in the near future.
I did get to the pharmacy and got some anti-diarrhea medicine, and then got to the post office before they closed to mail back my broken trekking poles and pick up the new pair that had been mailed to me. Then I walked back to the pharmacy and picked up my hundredth pair of headphones, since I had lost my last pair in the Easton brook from Hades.
Finally I walked on and got to the border. I had put my pepper spray in a plastic bag with maps and other stuff, but was none too convincing in explaining that I didn’t have any pepper spray to the Canadian Border Patrol officer, who also insisted that the IAT did not go through Prince Edward Island or Nova Scotia.
So, I had the privilege of taking everything out of my bag and showing off all my cool ultralight gear to a different officer, who didn’t come up with any pepper spray and let me leave. I walked on, and soon got stopped by a couple of boys who wanted my autograph since I walked across the border. That lightened my mood a bit and I walked on, though my stomach felt a little funny.
Arriving in Perth-Andover, I found the ATV trail, which is paved for about fifty yards as it passes by a white house owned by a woman who offers hikers a place to stay for twenty bucks. I hiked on to the gravel ATV trail and took it for an hour or two as it ran alongside the river.
Dark clouds were overhead, and I thought about looking for a victim, excuse me, gracious host to let me stay dry. I stopped and looked at a group of people in a house on the left, and was going to move on when a man came outside and invited me in for supper.
My host was a tad obnoxious, but he was a nice guy and his friends were interested in my trek. I was not too hungry, but I ate a great dinner with them, then they sent me down the trail with advice on where to camp. I was disappointed that they didn’t invite me to sleep on the floor, but perhaps I had been pretty spoiled over the past couple of weeks.
I found my host’s brother’s empty cabin and pitched my tarp in the rocky grass as it began to rain. The rain stopped soon enough and all I could hear was the noise of an outdoor party at the neighbor’s cabin. I slept under my tarp for the first time since Tennessee.
