Barefoot on Mount Katahdin: How We Conquered Maine's Greatest Mountain (and Survived a Gut Emergency) A tale of a school bus too wide for the wilderness, a thru-hiker who'd rather go back, and a small stone elephant that crossed 2,190 miles The view that makes you forget your legs exist. Briefly. There is a special kind of humility that comes from driving a 40-foot converted school bus across North America only to be turned away — repeatedly — not by bandits, weather, or mechanical failure, but by tape measures. BaseCamp, our beloved home-on-wheels, has been rejected by Mexico (too heavy), bridges in the Deep South (too tall), and now, in a twist nobody saw coming, the great wilderness of Maine. Baxter State Park, home of Mount Katahdin — at 5,269 feet the highest peak in Maine and the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail — has a vehicle size limit of 9 feet tall, 7 feet wide, and 22 feet long for a single vehicle...