I Shot a Moose!

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

I Shot a Moose!

I felt good this morning, as I slept all night through and I awakened before 6am. But I could have really gone back to sleep. I dozed until Tom left for the wash house and then got out of bed working my way down the mattress as I “made the bed” as I went. I’ve become rather good at the maneuver. I’m just glad that no one was watching me.

Off to the wash house, back to get dressed, breakfasted and out for the day. There were showers in the weather forecast but we had high hopes of having a good day of seeing the colors in the western mountains of Maine anyway. We were on our way by 8:30.

Following some not-so-clear directions from the woman in the office of how to get to Lewiston, we started our “scenic tour” as suggested in a book that was on the AARP website. The sprinkles kept coming and we kept going. All of a sudden it was a beautiful day again.

We found 3 caches along the way in the showers. We had no problem walking around finding the caches and didn’t really get damp. We have another one to find if we want to go after it. Tomorrow is supposed to be another day like this one so we’re not so sure.

One of the things that we had trouble finding was a place to take care of the “call of nature.” There was actually no place along the highway that either of us could use. We saw a sign for an outhouse and pulled into what seemed to be a small park. We found the “CLOSED” sign on the outhouse but found a wonderful little stopping place with a nice little creek and waterfall and the resulting white water as it cascaded through the rocks. This was Coos Canyon in or near the town of Byron. We have some wonderful pictures that we will have to share. Tom says that he will have to download GIMP, a free photo editing program so he can deal with the pictures immediately and post them with the blog. So until we get home you will just have to wait to see the pictures. Sorry. It was just a nice little falls.

Still on Rt. 17, at the site of one of the caches was a magnificent scenic overlook called “Height of Land.” It was created in 2011 so it was very new. The Appalachian Trail crossed the overlook at one end. There was a bus there that had passengers on a fall color tour. Some of the passengers were looking for the trail both over and down the mountain and up the mountain. When they couldn’t see it they were getting very frustrated. They were even taking pictures of the sign that announced the presence of the trail. At that point I didn’t know where it crossed so I was of no help. Don’t know if they found anyone who knew where it was.

The overlook was high in the mountains with views of many mountains in the distance. We could see the Mooselookmeguntic and Rangeley Lakes. Of course we took many pictures, which you will get to see later. But we still didn’t find the thing that we really needed at that point.
At Oquossoc we picked up Rt 4 again as we turned east and then south. This is the farthest north that we have ever been in Maine. We turned our faces toward “home”. About noon the sun came out full blast. It was a wonderful sight. Everything looked brighter.  The temperature came to be 69 degrees at one point this afternoon.

As we were traveling south and down the mountain and being followed too closely by a rental truck we saw a sign for a rest area. But how to stop safely with a vehicle that close was a problem. But Tom did it and we went in seeking that which was oh, so necessary. And there they were, two little cinderblock buildings. Each was rather fragrant after a season of use but each stood ready to serve. Ahhhh! Such relief.

We traveled on south down the road. The one thing I wanted to see this trip was a moose. We heard a story about a moose coming to visit some diners at the lobster pound at which we ate, but he did not do it again for us. And as many times that we were warned by signs along the way that there was high moose traffic for the next x miles, we did not see any moose. Now I was saying that I would be happy to just get a picture of a sign that had the moose on it. We missed one and then there it was my sign, moose and all. And the warning was different this time. Also it came in plenty of time to stop and was at a spot where Tom could safely stop the van. I got out of the van and shot, with the camera, a moose.

We stopped to eat at a restaurant about mid afternoon. No cooking tonight for supper. We bought what we needed in the way of groceries. Now we were really ready to get “home.”
Because of work traffic and traffic signals, we arrived in the campground just before 5:30. Tom set a waypoint on the navigator so we allowed “the man” to tell us how to go. He got us here safely and correctly. He even chose a shorter route than following Rt 4. And it worked!

We were really tired when we arrived at the campground. But there was evidence that it had rained here, and possibly, rained hard. There was a puddle at the one end of our pull-through camp site (meaning that you don’t have to back the trailer out of the site) about the size of Lake Mooselookmeguntic. No! That’s not true but it is rather large. It is about as long as our camp site is wide and both covers the road and a considerable distance into our site. Tom chose to park the van on the other side of the trailer. geesh!

We had a quiet evening except for getting some nectarine stains on my top. Another geesh! I have some Oxi-clean spray for stain removal which seems to be doing well. We shall see tomorrow.

Tomorrow we expect to go to Freeport, where we will visit the LL Bean flagship store and possibly go to the Desert of Maine or see some of the shore.

Some statistics:
We hit the 1000 miles from home mark yesterday.
We hit the 1200 miles from home mark today.
We traveled more miles today than we did yesterday.
We found three geocaches today.