Tuesday, July 6th. No sense of time, but sometime mid afternoon
Still on the Eastern Trail, now past the Scarborough Marsh. We had left John (our driver) at our last stop with the very general direction of "We'll meet you in the parking lot of the Saco Hannaford". We were still in the happy phase of our walk, this was about a five mile leg, and it was hot out, but at this point we were still being driven by optimism and good vibes from the start of our walk. This wasn't going to last.
This is us entering Old Orchard and then Saco. Note the slight degradation of us at the Saco sign.
Also note the water soaked shirts on Pete and Joe. Check that. Water soaked implies the wet was caused by water. Make no mistake, that was sweat my friends. It was hot and we were feeling it. Heat has a way of (in your mind) adding miles and (in actuality) wearing you out. But buoyed by our pleasant experience thus far on the ET there was actually some discussions of us sticking to it all the way to Kennebunk. That, we would eventually find out , was being overly optimistic. And unrealistic.
So after a few more miles of walking through the calm of the trail, we were thrust back into the traffic of Route 1 now in Saco. The five of us huddled after taking the overpass over Route 1 to be sure that our handy dandy ET trail map would take us to our meet up destination or if we had to start walking on Route 1 again, map showed a bit more of trail walking and (up to this point) the map don't lie.
Maybe 15 minutes after crossing over this overpass we made it to our next scheduled rest stop. Meet John, water and snack up.
Oh, and Joe finds his wallet! After an hours long manhunt by Joe's family, turns out it was in his bag snuggly tucked in with all of our "stuff" in the back of John's truck. Don't know why Joe didn't maybe think of suggesting this to John , oh, say, about three hours ago. John actually said he considered rummaging through Joe's bag, but his sense of protecting Joe's privacy, along with the fear of what he might actually find packed away in that bag, kept him from doing so. Next time (if there would be a next time) John pledged not to be so chivalrous. Don't blame him.
While we all rested, I took advantage of my Hannaford connection (Hannaford is my employer) and went inside the store, not only to go relieve myself, but also to stand in the Produce backroom cooler to try and take about ten degrees off of me. Not sure why I didn't have any other takers.
Per usual our routine on these stops was to both rehash what we just went through and also plan our next leg. Based on our nothing but good experience on the ET, and referencing the map that don't lie, it looked liked a quick walk through part of Biddeford to connect to the trail. We'd already covered about ten miles, and based on our preplanning, given that we didn't leave until noon (actually AOP was noon...we left about 45 minutes after that), our day 1 goal was already met. We decided to press on.
This is when the ET map started to lie to us. This is the part of the story I've been dreading to relive. Despite having some of these things to occur over the next few days...
- another 95 degree day
- blisters on our feet
- pain in our joints
- Tropical Storm Elsa
this was the worst leg of our entire walk.
Let's see if I can convey the misery the next few hours gifted us.
Remember, were were hot and tired, but still feeling optimistic...and also a bit delusional, thinking somehow we were going to make it to Kennebunk when we connected with the ET again. If the second leg of the trail was anything like the first, we just might make it.
Right.
Let's start with this. Here is the map we were using as a guide to reconnect with the trail after our stop in Saco.
Yellow lines are on the road - green line is all trail. So our plan was to walk down Route 1 in Saco wind though the lovely town of Biddeford, Elm Street to Main Street - turn left on Cathedral Oaks - walk part of the trail - on to Barra, then BAM, we're back on the trail. Easy, right? Wrong.
This part of the walk was EXCRUTIATINGLY long. We were good walking from Saco into Biddeford. Getting off Route 1 in Biddeford was our mistake. Here's the problem, It doesn't matter how you walk from where the trail ended in Saco and starts again in Biddeford. Can't be done. Strike that. SHOULDN'T be done. There is about a five mile gap between the two points. Looking back on it, if we had known this and were adamant about sticking to the trail we should have piled in John's truck at that break and driven to the restart of the trail. Oh, and also clearly not called out on the map - or should I say not clearly called out on the map - is this. The trail starts again in the back corner of a parking lot of a Hospital...a hospital five miles away!
We eventually made it to the start of the trail, which ended up being the end of our walk for the day. Enough bitching....here are some details of us walking, slowly melting, and generally deteriorating between these two points.
- Walked past and posed for some photos at Thornton Academy. Not sure why. None of us have any connections for this school. Actually , maybe a little distaste even.
- Entered Biddeford and then started following the map path to reconnect to the trail
- Somewhere on a side street in Biddeford Joe finds a necklace with a cross on it, picks it up and pockets it.
- This is where the title of this post comes into play
- If you're at all familiar with the Brady Bunch, there was the episode where Mike takes the family to Hawaii. Early on Bobby find a Tiki idol, and thinking it is good luck, keeps it.
- Well, the joke was on the Brady's. That idol was not good luck, it was actually bad luck!
- How else can you explain...
- Bobby sitting on Don Ho's ukelele
- Alice throwing out her back while doing a hula dance
- A tarantula crawling across Peter's bed while he is asleep
- ..and worst of all, Greg wiping out while surfing.
- Throw it back Joe, before it's too late!
So , you get the picture. we're hot, we're not finding the trail, and we're walking aimlessly through Biddeford. Spirits are declining, Link is getting lame, and we're all silently plodding along. As we walk along Main street, the only goal is to find Cathedral Oaks Drive...that's the street on our (un) trusty ET map that brings to the reconnection to the trail. It's like the Holy Grail. Somehow finding the street with make everything better.
Except it won't.
Main Street in Biddeford makes Main Street in South Portland look like the Champs des Elysees in Paris.
(This is Paris, by the way, not South Portland)
I'm using my old trick of walking through lawn sprinklers that I see in people's front yards. I look behind me and see Joe following suit. We're starting to have some noticeable distance gaps between the walkers now. The lead group has lost sight of the back group. Denise and I come across a biker and I say to him, "Is this the way to the Eastern Trail?"...but it sounded more like "isyay isthay ethay ightray ayway otay ethay easternyay ailtray"? Gibberish. Thinking he understood me, he said something like, "Yeah it's just around that corner"...despite not even being able to see the corner anywhere ahead of us that he was speaking of, we pressed on.
* Is this post wearing you out yet? That's the point. I want you to have at least an inkling as to what we are feeling at this point. Although writing this is tedious enough (as, I'm sure reading this is as well), it's not 1/100th as tiring as this day was. I promise, the following days won't be as tedious.
We take a break at a picnic table in the yard of an apartment building, huddling up with John to plan our next move. Pinning all of our hopes on the bicyclist indicating the trail was near we decided to keep going. Oh, and we thought we found a boyfriend for Denise. As we were recuperating on the picnic table, a shirtless inhabitant of the apartment house comes out with his dog to get a smoke and he tells us that he heard us (me) on the radio that morning. I picture him loving Foghat. Personally, I think she could have at least given him her number.
I think John had actually done some reconnaissance and found that the mythical Cathedral Oaks was indeed, just around the corner. This stop was probably the hardest of the trip to get the legs in motion again...heat...exhaustion...but we were walking that trail to Kennebunk, even if it killed us (which was now feeling like a distinct possibility). We pressed on.
Hey! up on the left it's the street we've had on our radar for the last hour and a half (that's a guess, because just like you reading this post, at this point we had lost all concept of time). Left on to Cathedral Oaks, walk through a nice neighborhood, then guess what? Could it be? A path through the woods! Come to find out, these was a bit of a tease....after traversing a bridge over a stream, we had maybe a 300 yard reprieve in the shade of the woods until we found ourselves back on a main road. Now, I've been in Biddeford dozens, if not hundreds of times, but I had NO CLUE where we were. Left or right decision once we hit the road (this time for real) and we felt right would continue us South , so we took the right
Yeah, that's the turnpike to our left. So now we're on Barra Street or road or boulevard. Kind of a main road, sidewalks, office buildings, a hotel. No clue.
Then we come to a VERY main road. I'm talking street lights. four lanes of traffic, there's a Dunkin' Donuts...and a Taco Bell, and an Amato's, and where the hell are we? This must be one of those routes in some unfamiliar part of Biddeford that for some reason I've never driven down...I'm not the best with numbered routes...maybe is route 112, or 202, or 309-11...who knows? (And another side note - it wasn't until post walk that I would figure out where were were, which was just off the Biddeford exit and then on Alfred street toward the five points intersection. It's amazing what a different perspective, and twenty miles of walking in 95 degree heat can do to your sense of direction).BUT, across the street, what's that we see? A sign for the Eastern Trail. Hallelujah ! We have made it...but wait, this sign is pointing us into the parking lot of a hospital. Now we're pretty beat up and as close to dead on our feet as we'd be for this whole walk, but not hospital beat up. So, we kind of aimlessly walk through the parking lot, in the general direction of the back corner. Finally, there it was, the entrance to the Eastern Trail. If we had found this , maybe, two hours earlier, we would have kept going, but at this point we were ready to wave the white flag. Actually we were ready somewhere along Main Street, but like the early explorers centuries before us (think a much less prepared Lewis and Clark) we were driven to make it to our destination. This is a picture of how we looked at this point.
I have this pictured saved as "burnt toast". That's what we were. This was the point when we decided we were done. Not just done, but done done. Initially feeling discouraged, it wasn't until we had a chance to collect our thoughts that realized that this was actually four miles beyond the planned end of the day one walk. This is something we did (and ultimately worked in our favor) for each leg of our trip. Call to John, vaguely try to explain where we were, and wait for our ride.
Good place to stop. Next post will be a quick overview of our first night's accommodations, then the entirety of day two of our walk. I promise you (and myself) that I'll cover each subsequent day in an individual post. I needed this one to be as painful to read as it was to walk. It's more rainbows and unicorns (although not entirely) after day one.
Geez, this was a long one.
