Maine: Sunday May 11th

Sunday the search was on for the lonely grave, or the grave of Olive Stiles, the second wife of Becky's ancestor, Jacob Stiles. The GPS coordinates were plugged in and we were on our way. The GPS took us up a dirt road on which a path would take us on a two mile hike to the grave. But the GPS said that we were much closer to the gave than that so we decided to just plow our way through the woods to find the grave. Two snakes and a million ticks later we found our selves running out of the woods waving our hands over our bodies screeming "AHHHHHH lyme disease!!" Our search for the trail head was on! Just to note, we were covered head to toe in bug spray... Didn't work...


The name of the trail head was Horseshoe Pond Trail. We decided that the best way to find it was to go the White Mountains National Forest headquarters and find a park map. We seem to have gotten distracted on the way, and ended up hiking past Bricker(?) Slides (would be totally awesome in July with an intertube)....




...and up Blueberry mountain. At first the trail was nice and pleasant, but then it just kept going up, and up, and up, for about the next 2 miles.


We made it to the top and had the most amazing view. It was totally worth it!

We climbed back down, dying of thirstation, and continued our search for Olive's grave. Fortunately, the park had the most amazing well water to drink. We found the road we needed to be on and were exciting to get this done! However, we soon found the road was closed. More hiking, past gigantic moose tracks and questionable cat (mountain lion? bobcat?) tracks. Whew!

Then we spotted it, such a nice, normal sign for such a big adventure. We searched high and low for this! We headed down the beautiful, well kept trail. I'm sorry to say, but we somehow managed to completely pass Olive's grave. Dj happened to look back behind his shoulder and spotted it.

It really is a special place, just peaceful and quietly beautiful. We cleaned up the grave site a bit and wished Olive a happy mother's day. It was interesting trying to imagine what the Stiles family, all 11 children, would have experienced back in 1848 when they lived here.

The grave reads: Olive W. wife of Jacob Stiles died August, 1848 AE 51yrs 7m



We ended the day by driving to Bridgton, the town where Jacob's dad, Noah, moved to with his twin brother, Enoch in 1771. It was a nice little town, with a suprisingly yummy dinner at Ricky's Diner! We really enjoyed driving through the countryside and seeing all the farms (houses with the barns attached) and scenery. There were beautiful lakes everywhere! It was quite the adventure, but so meaningful on so many levels. I think we ended up hiking about 9 miles.