Day Four – A Little R & R

June 24, 2016 - Who Woulda Thunk?

Well, it seems that the chowder was ill-advised.  Who would have thought there would be a ton of gluten in it?  So between that and Marilyn’s heel which is acting up, we’ve decided to take a long, leisurely morning to rest and lick our wounds.  About two o’clock we finally hit the trail and go back to the Appalachian Trail Café for brunch.  I have most of my scrambled eggs and GF cornbread and am able to keep it down, so that’s a great thing!

After lunch we go to the Hannaford to make arrangements for Marilyn’s doctor to phone in a prescription for her.  The lady is very helpful and it seems that all will go well.

With our tummies full and our errand run, we’re ready for our late afternoon moose tour at the New England Outdoor Center.  Turns out they have two locations and the one we go to is only for rafting, so we turn around and retrace our steps a bit until we get to the Twin Pines Cabins and River Drivers Restaurant, where we belong.  It’s a good thing we always try to be so darned early!!  We still arrive with nearly half an hour to spare and have time to look at Millinocket Lake and the beautiful Maine scenery.

We’re taking the van instead of the pontoon boat because Jessica, our guide, says we have a better chance of spotting moose that way.  Our first stop is actually a people photo shoot!  Everyone piles out and Jessica takes everyone’s photo with their camera so we all have a keepsake.

Yesterday when we were in Baxter, I must not have used enough insect repellent because I'm covered in itchy awfulness all around my neck and even on my scalp!!  Today I got smart and wore the mosquito netting we bought years ago to take to Alaska!  It's much better and I only get a few new bites from the evil no-see-ums!

We revisit our favorite spot on the Golden Road, but nobody’s home tonight and keep a close watch on the roadsides for random spottings.  We stop on the Abol Bridge for another view of Mt. Katahdin and “dip into” Baxter State Park for try the Sand Stream Pond again.  I remember this as being a nice, short hike;  but today it seems a great deal longer.  And, again, there’s nobody home.  Although our official three-hour tour is over, Jessica feels bad that we haven’t seen any meese, so we go back to the Golden Road and lo and behold, off in the distance, we see a cow and calf!  That’s exactly what we had told the Universe we would like to see!

Mt. Katahdin, the highest mountain in Maine, from the Abol Bridge on the Golden Road.

There are fish jumping to catch these insects.

Jessica is a delight and shares lots of stories about the area.  The Golden Road was named because the locals said it would cost a million dollars a mile to build it!  It was necessary to build it because the Clean Water Act no longer allowed the loggers to dump their logs in the river to go down to the mills.

We get back to Twin Pines a little after sunset, just in time for the afterglow.  Neither of us feel like eating and, again, we go home and just crash.  The only difference is that there are no muffins waiting for us!  I don’t mind because I will probably never eat another muffin! And Marilyn doesn’t seem to care, either.  She smashed her knee on the hike and just wants to go to bed.  Still it was a lovely day.