After all that touring, we headed back into Jackman and ate a nice dinner at this cute pub. Good burgers and we watched the first couple of innings of the Red Sox game. We listened to the rest of the game on the way home. The drive home was at dusk with the sunset behind us. It was just as beautiful, though very different on the way back. I can't wait to make this drive in the autumn. I know it'd be beautiful in the winter but I'm not sure I'm the one to do the driving on that trip!
Marcus is Rodney's nephew that runs this camp called Moose River Outpost. He gave us a tour (in that little Renegade Jeep) of the camp, but not of all 7,000 acres. Here's Marcus, Jenn's mom (Jenn is Rodney's sister-in-law), and Rodney. Jenn and her mom had been in Quebec and stopped at camp on their way DOWN from Canada. [Notice that in this sentence, the word "camp" is used to describe an organized facility for camping and not the traditional Maine "camp."]
Here is one of the camping areas at the camp. There are 25 wooden platforms with tents on them and some nice amenities.
This lake is only 186 of their 7,000 acres but it's all theirs.
Here's Rodney taking photos (imagine that) with his big camera (not the iPhone) and a little help from "Little H".
We passed up several rest stops and scenic overlooks but Rodney kept saying the best one is coming. Here it is at Attean Lake and it turns out, he wasn't kidding.
We're off! It's time for Celebration Tour #4! We headed north this time instead of the coast. We had an added bonus of an extra passenger, Rodney's niece, whom we'll just call "Little H". She was such a great traveler. :-) She'd been visiting Grandma and Grandpa for a week and they were planning to take her home that day, so we saved them a trip since we were on our way to visit mom and dad at the camp outside of Jackman.
Here's "The Forks" section of the Kennebec River where it meets up with the Dead River. A lot of white water rafters go through here. We saw a lot of gorgeous scenery on the way, but this was our first stop. My favorite sign before we got here was the green mileage sign that said, "Canadian Border 65 miles."
This is the rest stop at The Forks. See the buses in the background? Those are used for carrying white water rafters. Those are empty but in our 5 minutes at this stop, we saw at least 3 full buses go by.
I don't know what kind of flower these are but they're big and beautiful and these pictures don't do them justice. Rodney and his "Mum" planted them right outside the porch window where she could see them and enjoy them.
Today I drove through town and drove by a lot of activity in the park. Then I remembered that it was Strawberry Festival time. Now when you say "Strawberry Festival" in this town, the most common reply is, "That used to be called Moonlight Madness but they changed it up because they wanted to be more artsy and because there were so many hoodlums ruining the night time events." I think next year's posters should just go ahead and proclaim, "Formerly Known As Moonlight Madness."
St. Luke's Episcopal knows how to work these events. They offered a $9.95 Lobster Roll Sack Lunch. It included a lobster roll, chips, drink, and cookie. In my case, they had one bottle of water left, so I lucked out on that. And my cookie was really a brownie which was okay by me because there are a lot of cookies that I don't care that much about but a brownie, anyway you make it, is always delicious. Their lobster roll had a lobster salad in it that was quite delicous. They had the tiniest bit of mayonnaise and a touch of celery in it, but the lobster meat was sweet and tender and obviously very fresh. YUM!!
Melvin was on the Leadership Institute Planning Committee with me this past spring. Thank goodness we did that together or I never would've met him. And now he's leaving! Today they held a reception for him. His boss asked him what he wanted served at the reception and he said, "Nothing healthy." So that's what she did. We had a choice of Whoopie Pies or cookies. Now this is my kind of party! His boss, Kirsten, was also on the Leadership Institute Planning Committee so I got to know her as well. She gave a fabulous presentation to honor him at the reception. The attendee list was a who's who of UMF folks, which is especially impressive in the middle of the summer when so many people are on vacation. I was impressed.
