Home: Allagash Wilderness Waterway Canoe and Guide Training Trip Journal

September 22, 2006

I woke up to a frost at 5AM and Orion was clearly visible in the clear pre-dawn southern sky. How strange that Orion seems to be the favorite constellation of many folks. Maybe that is because it is pretty easy to imagine that it looks like a man.

I grabbed my Allagash books and my Allagash map out of the group library box and packed everything in my personnal duffle for the trip home. I grabbed my paddle and lifejacket too. I walked to the store (open at 3AM for the local loggers) and bought soveniers for my wife and kids. I encouraged everyone in the group to get up and get packed so we could get going.The cabin where some of our folks stayed had a painted wooden floor. What made it most unique was that they had painted a line of deer tracks on the floor which led up to the rear end of a deer mounted on the wall.We left at 6AM and got to Fort Kent at 6:45AM. In Fort Kent you can see the end of Route 1 North and the beginning of Route 1 South on the same sign. I called my wife on the cell phone and talked to the kids. My youngest missed me "worser" than I missed him and told me he liked me a whole lot. All the other customers in the diner were jabbering away in French. We were the only ones speaking English. We were back on the road by 7:15AM.We stopped in Ashland at the woodsman's museum and checked out a King Pine log on display as well as log hauling equipment, a loggers cabin, and other interesting historical things.We also stopped briefly at the Cold Spring Rest Area, and then again in Patten at the drug store to adjust ourselves back into the food of society. I had taken over 700 pictures on this trip and, although we were all tired and uncomfortable in the van, we had a good time looking through the camera’s LCD at them. We could see Katahdin, where the journal began, way off on the horizon. We had traveled more than 100 miles north from where we had started.

Once we got to Bangor, we drove past Stephen King's house, and then dropped Bud off at his house. We ate at Dysart's. Tim dropped me off at 3PM at the Gray exit and I waited for my wife and kids to arrive which they did at 4:30PM. Dirty and in need of a shave- my excellent adventure was now over.