Owl's Head Saturday February 6, 2021 #35

We left Lincoln Woods by 8 am.  Heated flushing bathrooms in the parking lot!!!  A windy day but that really did not affect us until we were hiking along the top of the mountain.  This is a long hike.  It ended up being about 18 miles.  2 bushwacks.  Relatively flat and easy until the last 1-2 miles.  Bushwacks were also easy to follow because that was the only route people were going.  Then it was very steep even o the bushwack up.  Skiing along the Lincoln Woods railroad bed would have made this much quicker and easier (using different muscles for 6-7 miles of the 18 but I was the only one who would have liked to ski the beginning and end evidently.  This was with Hiking with Dogs:  Larry, Marlene, Rebekah and I with our doggos.  There was a lot of waiting on this, for some to catch up, peaked twice so some overlap to get up to the 18.  Great butt sledding down the first mile or so.  No one wanted me to bring the sleds but maybe too steep for anything but butt sledding?  I kept having to declump my snowshoes which I wore the whole way.  With about 1 mile left I removed them completely to walk barebooted which felt much better, my feet had been rolling around on big snowballs and the last flat part seemed like forever!  Got back to the parking lot around 7.  So it was an 11 hour day.  The next day I realized I dropped my fave Patagonia neck gater.  I am so sad. It snowed shortly afterward so it is probably under some snow.  I need a quick place to store stuff other than my tiny pockets.  Taking the backpack on and off to stow is annoying and impractical in groups but the walk back was warming.  This was my longest hike yet.  And it felt like it.  The dumb tracker I got my dog only showed us getting to Lincoln Woods, then it just went offline, for days!  The FI tracker has failed on every single hike.  If there is no GPS it does not work at all and even if there is, it is spotty.  I should return it.  I really wanted to know how many steps he does average for one of mine but usually, I do more steps than you see for him because my Fitbit works much better!