Appalachian Trail (day 98) - Golden Road to Birches Campsite / mile 2193

"Last night I slept on a baseball bat" Roper

I've arrived at the Baxter Park rangers kiosk just past 6 AM, there were two other section hikers waiting for him to come, soon after we got joined by Trademark and Diehard. Promptly at 7 AM ranger Donald Duck rolled in to give us briefing and open sign in sheet for today's 12 spots at the Birches Campsite only available to thru hikers (or people who continually hiked here from Monson, 100 miles away). But before he started we saw Little Foot and her tramily of four walking down the road towards us, they made it here just in time!

Donald told us about an additional sing in and free permit we needed to get from ranger inside the park to summit Katahdin tomorrow (it was all a bit convoluted but it worked out well). After all the information about "conservation first, recreation second" has been passed to us, we were free to go. Everyone but the two section hikers chose to go back a mile to the general store to get few snacks for the way, ice-cream and drink some beers. We waited until 9 AM until store got opened and bought all their coffee, sandwiches and whoopie cakes in one go, the hiker hunger was strong with everyone on this final push.

I've sticked around here for an hour and then went back on trail to hike remaining 9 miles to the Birches Campsite inside the park, I was going slow taking pictures and stopping at the waterfall called "Big Niagara Falls" just beside the trail. I've arrived at the campsite at around 3 PM and set up my tent next to Trademark's on a gravel platform. Soon enough we heard that Diesel will be joining us as well! He arrived later on and managed to get the last remaining spot for the Birches, he took a shorter blue blaze trail to get here and set his tent between mine and Trademark's soon after.

At 5 PM ranger Sara arrived, she collected the 10$ fee for staying at the campsite, got our personal details including emergency contact in case something went wrong and gave us a nice hang tag we could keep which included the Northbound thru hiker number, I was the 79th person finishing the AT who started at the Springer Mountain in Georgia this year, which was amazing as my starting number printed on the green tag I got handed at the start of the trail had number 1804!

I went to the ranger station and borrowed a free day pack we could use to climb Katahdin with, my big pack and all the stuff we wouldn't need for that day like tent and sleeping bag we could hang in a special shelter by the rangers station for the time being. 

Phil, one of the section hikers bought wood and we had a fire going while having the dinner, supper and snack devouring party to make our packs lighter (unfortunately we had to take all our remaining food up the mountain tomorrow). Everyone was in good spirits especially after the weather forecast came through announcing a sunny and partially cloudy day with small to no chance of rain.

It was a perfect day and I was looking forward to making the final push tomorrow. 

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