July 9, 2015 Loon Lodge to Allagash Lake via Johnson Pond

Woke up at 5:30 for my morning potty run. Can you call it roughing it when you can use a flush toilet? The cabin bed called me back and I slept in until 7AM.

I wandered down to the pond and caught an 8" Whitefish and released it. After oatmeal and coffee we sorted our gear and talked with the host. Once we were packed and loaded up, we started to leave but some forest rangers came and their truck blocked the road. The oldest child (the grandfather) and the youngest teenager managed to play smoke on the water perfectly on the tensioned canoe strap. Like most moments of pure genius, they were unable to repeat this feat. Although it took us a while to get going, we did manage to geocache at Round Pond Landing on the way to Johnson Pond.

We unloaded and carried down to the water's edge in order to load up the canoes. We shoved off around noon and were eating lunch on Johnson Pond Stream around 1. We ran out of water and pushed, pulled, tipped and shoved the canoes down the brook over beaver dams, logs, and sand bars. Once we made it to Allagash Stream, it was smooth cruising down to the ledge point campsite. We stopped to talk to a couple of long term campers there, and they told us about an undocumented spring at Ledge Point.

We stopped and checked out a campsite at Sandy Point which is one of the nicest we'd seen on the AWW. We'll have to come back someday and stay there. We canoed over to ice caves campsite which has two entrances and found it to be a very nice campsite too. The ice caves proved to be colder than expected but a nice break from the mosquitos. There were tons of bugs this year. We all put on headlamps and headed down into the cavern for a quick look around.

The couple at Ledge Point told the teenaged boys about a second cave with snow and this proved irresistible.  Although you really should have a rope to enter it, the oldest teenaged boy managed to get down into it and climb out with enough snow and ice to throw a snowball at his brother. He saved other chunks of ice for dinner.

We loaded up and headed to Cove campsite which was secluded but not aa good site. We paddled to Outlet which was very nice. We arrived just after 5PM, unpacked, made dinner, and set up camp. Beef tacos hit the spot! We used the ice chunks and managed to make pudding for dessert.

We made a fire for the dishwater (conserve the propane). Once the dishes were washed we cleaned up ourselves a bit for bed. We were all ready for bed by 8:15 but it was still light out. The joy of early Summer! We decided to fish in the brook until it got so thick with mosquitos and dark enough for us to go to bed and then read aloud the descriptions of river rapids and portages for the next day before finally turning in.