We drove up to Greenville on Thursday, stopping in Brooks for an excellent lunch at Ralphs. They have a creative menu and the food tastes as good as the description sounds.
Once settled in to our rooms at the Kineo View Motor Lodge, we combined our dogs and persons into one car and went up to take a look at the Lily Bay State Park. Lily Bay is on the eastern shore of Moosehead Lake and is a gorgeous campground with several sites on the water. We noted the sites we liked and promised ourselves that we will have a camping trip next summer-- John and I have a tent that we love, good sleeping bags, folding chairs from L.L. Bean and a new Thule roof carrier thing, so we need to use these items and camping is the way to do it. Since we are booked for a long bicycle ride next September and October, we will be in Maine for the summer and will have time to do some local travel.
A word about Kineo View-- we chose it originally because they allow dogs and this was our third stay. The place is gorgeous, well removed from the highway up a winding dirt road and perched in an open area with superb views of the lake and mountains. The light was lovely when I took the picture below-- clearing skies after a rainy day.
Every room faces the view and each has floor to ceiling windows and a balcony. The breakfast is rudimentary and we didn't even bother with it. In the past there has been no in-room coffee but each room now has a Keurig. The wifi is better than on previous stays but intermittantly slow and the bed felt very hard to me but I slept well. I would certainly stay there again and recommend the place to others.
On Friday we climbed Little Kineo. The hike itself is about 1.5 miles and is rated as "easy" but I would call it moderate. There are a couple of tricky places like this one but Joan had no trouble with it.
There are ample places to put feet and hands but it was a bit daunting for Darby who needed encouragement to get up and even more to get down on the return trip.
Here are the old geezers at the summit.
The drive up to Little Kineo takes as long as the hike and uses lumber company roads where active lumbering is taking place. We had to wait briefly for a loaded truck to pull out and passed another loaded truck at the side of the road.
\
Greenville tourist blurbs say that the moose population is greater than the human, but despite many miles of driving in the outback, we saw none.
Little Kineo was a warm up for our planned hike up Big Moose on Saturday. I was slightly anxious about the hike because it was said to be about three miles and that is more than I have hiked in the past couple of years. When we were at Cold River Camp during a very hot week in 2012, I found a four mile round trip to be long enough and I only briefly contemplated a trip up Chocorua this last summer when John and Andrew hiked it. The weather at Moosehead was delightful, however and I had no trouble with the climb-- rated "strenuous" in the hike book. My self congratulation was somewhat dimmed when I learned that the hike was only about 2.5 miles each way. Revised hike descriptions confirm the length that was measured on GPS units carried by both John and Charlie. Nonetheless it was a steep and demanding climb and I was happy to realize that my hiking days are not yet over.
John, Dereka, Joan and Charlie on Big Moose.
Our plan for Sunday, forecast to be rainy, was to drive to Moxie Falls; the highest falls in New England or only in Maine, depending where one reads about it. By paved road, Moxie Falls is about 75 miles from Greenville but via the Broca Road only about 20. The choice was an easy one and the Broca Road was a lovely drive albeit slow and bumpy.
The rain stopped completely by the time we arrived and we followed the smooth and wide trail provided by the State of Maine down to the falls. I was so worried about Darby going over the edge that I didn't focus on pictures but John took this very nice one. One comes to the falls at the top and follows a trail down to several viewpoints.
The trail became increasingly narrow and scraggly but it beckoned us onward to the point where it curved away from the water. Since we knew that the Moxie Stream converged with the Kennebec River not far from the falls, we decided to stay on the little trail. Although not knowing exactly where it did go, we thought we could not get lost and this turned out to be good woodsmanship. It took longer than I expected and I allowed small niggling doubts to surface (but never voiced them) and eventually we did return to the main trail. Thus we got a 2.3 mile hike on a day when we had planned not to hike at all and the dogs continued their string of excellent sniffing adventures.
John had learned from our motel manager that the relatively nearby Harris Dam was a site worth visiting so after a "riparian" lunch at The Forks (including the de rigeur bottle of Moxie), we headed back into the woods. Harris Dam is where rafters embark on a whitewater trip through the Kennebec Gorge, taking advantage of daily water releases. We again drove several miles on a dirt road before arriving at the surprisingly massive hydroelectric facility, Harris Station.
Near the dam was a long complicated stairway, designed to facilitate bringing rafts down to the river. The commercial trips, all scheduled for maximum water release in the morning, were finished but a river guide and his girlfriend had come back for a private trip and we were able to watch him bring his raft down the stairway.
We got into a nice chat with the fellow and accepted his invitation to sit in the raft for a photo op. We weren't very convincing as a group about to embark on the river but we got some laughs.
Thus, all that was left of our Moosehead weekend was a final dinner, a final breakfast and the trip home. Farewell beautiful Great North Woods-- we will be back.
No comments:
Post a Comment