Clouds but not rain greets us in the morning. It’s a good day for photographing waterfalls. We decide on a hike to Orin Falls, a level but somewhat lengthy hike. Before leaving the campsite we meet a father and daughter who have flown up to Maine from the Washington, DC area. They’re goal for today is to see a moose. Meanwhile, we have traveled through some of the most densely populated areas of moose for almost two months and we have yet to see one. Moose tracks are all that we can list to date. Marsha’s goal for today is to see moose scat.
That gets Wells thinking about Moose Turd Pie. It’s an old joke often centered around the Adirondacks or Maine Woods back in the day of lumberjack camps. The worst job at the camp was being cook. You needed to be up before everybody else to fix a huge breakfast and you were the last to go to bed at night. Well the cook is the cook until someone complains about the food. The person that complains becomes the cook. Well, this guy was cook for way too long and he was determined to pass the task onto another poor lumberjack. He’s out in the woods collecting food for supper and he happens upon a huge pile of moose turds and he gets thinking… moose turd pie. He can’t serve only dessert so he creates a spectacular dinner with all the fixing and the lumberjacks are raving about it. Now it’s time for dessert. He serves up large pie slices as the diners are salivating over this mysterious yet delicious looking pie. The first guy takes a huge bite and shouts out, “My god that’s Moose Turd Pie,” and as he is falling to the ground passing out from the experience he shouts out, “Good though!”
So our goal for today is to find moose scat. We head out to the trail head. The trail to the falls is part of the International Appalachian Trail which snakes it’s way from Baxter State Park to Lands End at the eastern end of the Gaspe. The trail is wide enough so we hike side by side. The red maple leaves on the ground are bright red tell us fall is approaching. It’s not long before we spot moose tracks but no scat. We spot a couple of toads and frogs along the trail which we realize are the first amphibians we’ve seen on this trip. Next we find a snake skin and that is the first sign of any reptiles as well. Still no scat.
Luck is with us and we stumble over a couple of large piles. Since we spotted them first we didn’t really stumble… We reach our goal for today! Soon we arrive at the falls, but they are more like rapids rather than falls. Wells breaks out his camera and captures what he can.
After a lunch at the falls we start the return hike. We run into the Father and Daughter team who tell us they spotted a Bull Moose that walked out of the woods in front of their car on the drive to the trail head. They reached their goal. It gets us thinking maybe we should have a stretch goal today of actually seeing a Moose.
We set out to drive the Katahdin Loop Road again. We realize it’s not the right time of day to see Moose but Wells wants to photograph the mountains from a few of the viewpoints. Yesterday the weather was such that we could not see anything afar but today at least there is a chance. We drive along this loop which takes at least an hour to complete but each view point has Katahdin hidden in clouds.
Arriving back at camp we decide to have an early supper then head out around 6 to have another go at spotting moose. We begin the loop at six and as we move along there is nothing. We reach the best viewpoint for seeing Katahdin and Wells breaks out the camera. There we meet a couple also from Washington, DC. We chat briefly and push onward looking for our stretch goal of seeing Moose. The couple is behind us by maybe a quarter mile. They also would love to see a Moose.
Light is diming as the sun gets lower in the sky. Therefore, it’s not good conditions for photographing Moose but good conditions for spotting them. Around the next bend there is a female Moose in the middle of the road. We stop and Wells attempts to capture some images in the fading light. The couple behind us stop and walk up to where we are parked in the middle of this one way one lane road. The Moose is assessing what we are and are we a danger or not. See looks at us as we look at her maybe 150 feet away. She goes back to browsing along the edge of the road as we watch. We learn the couple work for the National Park Service but are on a vacation exploring Maine. We talk for a quarter hour and the Moose is still ahead just slowly walking and eating along the road. It’s dark now so we say goodbye to Theresa and Matt and head down the road. There’s the Moose again still in the road. She spots us and moves with more purpose down the road in front of us. She keeps moving forward along the road and not into the woods as she slows our progress to a Moose saunter. Finally, she moves off into the woods and we continue on to the campsite arriving around 8. Happy with having reached another goal.
Seeing North America 