Maine - Camden Hills Hike

We set of to Searsport to find a rug hooking shop advertised in the Hooking magazine that Heather and I get. It was a lovely drive but the shop was closed when we got there.

On the way we drove over this bridge that looked like a modern sculpture.

Hungry again we stopped at Young's Lobster Pound. It was huge, with a big deck and a whole warehouse
of lobster. It had quite an extensive menu but nothing for Judy. It was all seafood.

Out on the deck to eat the lobster roll others were making a real party of it. They had bought coolers with drinks,
sides, table clothes, wine glasses etc and just added the seafood they bought there. Lots of locals so we knew it
was good.

While we ate we watched this beauty sail in, drop the sails and motor into the harbour.

Then it was time to work off the food. We looked without success for the trail to Mnt Battey that Don had found on google maps so ended up going to the Camden Hills State Park. We parked in the hikers parking lot and set off on the Ocean Lookout trail.

It has been very dry in Maine but I'm sure this area is marshy normally and the
boards would be very welcome.

The trail was well travelled but often rough with rocks and roots. There were also stone "stairs"
at the really steep bits.

The trail map didn't match the trail signs very well and we found ourselves at this lookout.
Lovely, but not the one we were looking for. Don and Judy went back to the car to wait for us
and Heather and I continued up.

We spoke to people making their way down the trail and were given a variety of different descriptions of the direction and the kind of trail we were to look for. Finally we came to an area of rock "stairs" that most had described. To call them stairs is really a gross exaggeration of their uniformity and organization. Rocks had been roughly placed into an approximation of stairs but sometimes it was more like rubble and other times smooth slabs of the underlying rock. Luckily I was trying out a set of trekking poles and I found them very helpful.

The views when we finally got to the top were worth the sore muscles and sweat. We could see south along
the Maine coastline to Rockland and even out to Monhegan Island beyond.

A flock of turkey vultures cruised by us, using the up drafts and made us realize how high
we were. The sun was getting low in the sky though and we had to get down.

On the way down the poles were, again, very useful. We realized we had seen a lot of young people on the hike and we were probably the oldest on the trail. During one breather we stopped and chatted to a woman who had only had her knee replaced 4 months before and didn't feel so proud of ourselves. We probably hiked about 4 miles in total but the steep terrain made it feel like a lot more.