Day 2 with Pictures

I was up and packed by 9am, headed to a series of dirt roads that would get me to Millinocket.

Right outside the campground I ran into my first dirt road; I was thrilled.  I stopped to take a bit of air out of the tires so the bike would handle better.

Right outside Rangeley I ran into Mark and his brother Greg, both on KLR's and from Vermont.  I had seen them the night before in town and they were coincidentally staying at the same campground.  We chatted for a few minutes and realized we were taking some of the same roads.  I ended up riding with them for about 20 miles on Tim Pond Road.

I wish I could have ridden with them all day.  We had similar bikes and riding styles.  I would also soon appreciate the sense of security in riding through these remote areas with friends.

I continued my route and was on a dirt road that bordered Quebec and had access points for a wind farm.

It was hard to believe that semi trucks would regularly use this road.  It was in worse shape than the previous one, with washboard surfaces and lots of curves.

This area also had been logged extensively.  In one clearing I saw my second moose:

She watched me for a minute or so and then sauntered away.

The road kept going and going and I expected that at some point I would reach a paved crossroads or something.  If anything I was going deeper and deeper into the wilderness.  When the GPS would say 20 miles to the next turn, it was merely guiding me to another remote dirt road and there would be another 20 miles until the next turn.  I was probably on this road for an hour and a half and for a good hour I did not see another soul.

The road would get narrow and twisty in spots.  In one place it was washed out and I had to be careful of the line I took.  I started to get a little freaked out being by myself.  I was 20 miles from anywhere and if something happened to me it was unlikely that I would meet anyone to help me.

I stopped the bike once to take a break and was surprised at the absolute silence of the place.  A little eerie.  Eventually I recognized that I would be dumped out on Route 201, north of West Fork, which is a semi-popular area in this remote area.  I was relieved about that but with 8.5 miles until the crossroads the road surface changed dramatically.  Whoever maintains the road had laid down some new gravel recently and it hadn't been pushed down yet by the trucks.  It was like riding on marbles.  The handlebars were going back and forth as the front wheel tried to get traction.  I soon found the best way through it was to give the bike more power, which allowed the wheel to skate over the top of the stuff.  Right when I came to the Route 201 intersection a semi truck and trailer pulled onto the road, headed in my direction.  I was so glad I hadn't met them on some of those rough sections.

After this experience I realized that it would take far too long to travel more of these roads and I was too worried if something happened.  I decided to stick to paved roads the rest of the day.

The paved roads in this part of Maine weren't much different in that you can go a long time before you see anyone, but at least there was some kind of traffic.

I took Route 11 to Millinocket.  There is really nothing for the 50 miles until you get to Millinocket.  As I got closer I got my first glimpse of Mount Katahdin, which was obscured by fog:

 Downtown Millinocket on a Saturday afternoon:

The GPS told me there was a campground nearby, but when I got there it was closed:

I couple I met at the Katahdin rest stop told me about a place in Medway, the next town over, so I headed there and got a site. 

I've already talked about the Katahdin's Shadow campgrounds in a previous post.  It was like a resort but not of the high end variety.  I felt out of place as a single, like a lot of people were looking at me when I came in.  One of the staff even yelled at me to "slow down" because the speed limit is 7.2 mph.  (My bike can't go 7.2 mph in first gear.)  Watching people singing karoake, playing bingo and cavorting around the pool I felt like an anthropologist studying another culture.  I talked to one of the staff later in the evening and she told me there have been weddings and funerals on site because the families are so close knit.

I camped in a section called, "The Jungle," with all the other poor people in tents.  This is the "hut" they gave me; it's like an oversized dog house.  I overhead the staff tell someone it keeps out the flying bugs, but not the crawling ones.  I liked it because it was flat and I didn't have to set up and take down my tent.

I hung out in the common area until it closed and then watched a lightning storm to the south.  The lightning was even going horizontally.  I did get a good night sleep in the hut.

Total mileage:  235, total time:  8:43, with 3:07 stopped.