Dennis Dixon is heading North!: NE 100 Highest (#98)

Friday, October 26, 2018 - After another GREAT Breakfast at "The Looney Moose", I headed down the road. 10 miles later I turned off State Hwy 16 West, at Langtown Mill:

I took a right off the blacktop, and drove on the bridge over the Dead River:

After the bridge, you take a quick right and drive a dirt road with HUGE POOLS OF WATER - they might be frozen, they might not be frozen - they might be shallow, or they might be VERY DEEP. You take it VERY SLOW and stay as far to one side or the other as you can:

Once snow covered the road, I followed car/truck tires up. Because I thought "They must know where they are going", I mistakenly continued straight at one point, when I should have taken a hard left uphill. On my mistaken straightaway, I finally parked where there was enough space, and before the road "got bad":

I started hiking up this road around 9:30, expecting it to "go up" and turn into a trail. It didn't. After 30 minutes of relatively flat hiking, I pulled out my iPhone - one of my apps has "altitude", and I wanted to be up around 3000 feet. Um, I was actually around only 2000 feet:

So I headed back to the car - a very nice 3 mile hike in just about an hour. Fresh air, sunny day, get the body moving. And this is how my "lower hike" compares with the Real One:

Once I turned around and drove back, I easily identified "the correct turn":

I drove up as far as I was supposed to. This looks back down the road:

Over the car at the beautiful view:

And looking up my path-to-be:

The trail started out wide, with another set of footprints coming down - I guess they are leftover from yesterday:

After a while, it narrowed to a path:

After 0.98 miles I came to where I was supposed to turn left into the woods. I had previously printed 3 versions of what today's hike would look like:

There are 3 parts:
1) the mile northeast uphill on the road/trail,
2) a sharp-left cutback through the woods (marked by a piece of wood painted yellow) - straight path, and marked by yellow blazes on the trees (1/3 mile?, ?1/2 mile?)
3) when you get to the yellow-and-blue blaze on a tree ("top of high ground on the trail"), take a right and go up for the summit.

I used my Spidey-Sense a lot today. Going up I kept looking to my left, and it was just thick woods - until suddenly it wasn't:

The yellow piece of wood was laying down, with snow on top of it, but I could see a little yellow on its underside (I cleaned it off and propped it up better). The trail was OBVIOUS:

and that's OK with me. It wasn't as straight as I had been led to believe, but it is really the only way through these thick woods.

20 minutes, and 1/3 of a mile later, I was standing on the path, with a gut sense that the tree-with-the-yellow-and-blue-blaze should be around here somewhere. So I poked at the snow on the tree in front of me and VOILA - HERE IT IS:

As Lefty Gomez, who played for the Yankees in the 1930s, said: "I'd rather be lucky than good".

I was pleased to see a trail going UP, although not as straight as the one I had just been on:

There were twists and turns, and A LOT OF SNOW:

but 30 minutes (and 1/2 mile) later, I was at the summit of East Kennebago Mtn:

I walked around at the top, and the sky was SOOOOO BLUE:

Did I mention there was snow in northwest Maine?

Going back down WAS A BLAST! With my LL Bean rubber soles, I slid/boot-skied almost all the way down. Very Fun! It took me only 45 minutes to get back to the car (1:30 to get up). 4.3 miles later I was back on blacktop! Wonderful drive back down 16 West (in Maine), which turns into 16 South in New Hampshire. I wanted to stop for pictures many times, but only really did at Chocorua Lake in Tamworth, New Hampshire:

Wow - so this is what "October" is supposed to be like! Pretty nice!

Back in Massachusetts, I didn't want to just bang the corner (go down 95 and then up 128) - it is the Friday-before-Halloween, and I imagine there will be A LOT of traffic to Salem. So I cut over on 133 and went through Rowley, Ipswich and Essex. Home around 7:15 - Thank you GOD for all these Great Adventures (only 2 mountains left!)

Today's music:

Laurence Juber - LJ Plays The Beatles!, 2000

wonderful acoustic guitar renditions of 14 Beatles songs.

Chris Whitley - Living with the Law, 1991

The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour, 1967

Linda Ronstadt - Living in the USA - record, 1978

I have on my iPod the 2 sides I ripped from the original record (side 1 and side 2). It sounds lush and full. I just ripped it as a cd, and I'm interested to see if I can hear any differences - a nice little audio adventure.

various artists - Living In Oblivion: The 80's Greatest Hits, Vol. 2