Day 23 – Rapid River, ME, to Mooselookmeguntic Lake, ME

M-2016-9-12

Start: Cedar Stump Campground

End: Campsite #13 on Student Island in Mooselookmeguntic Lake, ME

On the Way:  Rapid River, Upper and Lower Richardson Lakes, Mooselookmeguntic Lake, Students Island

Miles: 16.5.  Milestone: 405.5!  Yes!

Map: 8

Doesn’t feel like much, miles-wise, but today’s progress included a bear of a portage and some serious against-the-wind-and-waves open water crossing.  Plus a weird campsite scenario this evening.

Portages are much worse, in my opinion, when the struggles of actually lugging your boat along the trail are compounded with uncertainty.  I usually try to scout ahead to get rid of the latter sensation, but when trying to make one trip out of the damn thing, it’s tricky.  Anyway, The Book said today’s portage was 3.2 miles, but it felt like 7 because of the bumpy roads and misleading turn-offs.

Carry Road was tough, but would have been a lot tougher if not for these handy boardwarks.  Image from the NFCT webpage.

Carry Road passed a series of cute little homesteads (along with some mysterious abandoned cars and farm equipment in the woods) along the Rapid River, as well as the not-so-cryptically named "Pond in the River."  I definitely want to head back to the whitewater of the Rapid River some day--it was three miles of drops and ledges!  Image via Rangely Lakes Heritage Trust.

After that, it was sweet, clear, fresh open water!  Dieter and I were able to cruise across the Richardson Lakes like the seaworthy vessels we are, although I feel pretty beat by it.  Time to try some BF cream tonight.  Ended up stopping at Students Island, which is lovely and apparently got its name from some Yale boys who roughed it here one summer in the 1850s, when this wasn’t actually a vacation area.  Go them.  It’s now managed by a Preserve/Trust that was some guy’s legacy to future canoeists, which also manages all the other campgrounds on Mooselemeguntic Lake.  I’d feel like a prize asshole stiffing this altruistic memorial trust out of my camping fee, so I’m staying at the closest site to the office that’s out of the wind and away from a hooligan bunch of Outward Bounders (on a Monday?  In Mid-September?).  That way, I can jet across and pay first thing in the morning.

Also, fun story, I realized I was here about a year ago with a MITOC canoe trip.  I’m blazing through the times we made on that trip, but to be fair, those were canoes, and many people on the trip tended to be—I learned this delightful word on that very trip—“lily-dippers.”  It was warm enough to swim then, and we passed the time waiting for the slow boats by jumping over the gunwales and practicing climbing back in.

My hammock pitch on Students Island, looking north out over Mooselemeguntic Lake.

One of the joys of hammock camping: every night's pitch feels like building a fort.  Got some nice lake breeze and a moonlight scene across the water all night.

Tomorrow, hopefully, I’ll blaze through the little town of Oquossoc (pronounced “Oh-kwiss-sick”) and be on to Rangely for a day in town!

Things Learned:

+ After letting it dry out for a couple days and attempting a power-up, Point and Shoot camera got too wet, I fear.  Hopefully the card’s still okay.  In the meantime, the seldom-charged cell phone camera will have to do.

+ Operation Bean Soak a success!  A little under-cooked, but 24 hours of soaking and a 7 minute boil made a delicious dried tomato, zucchini, bean, couscous, and olive oil dinner.  Like, real good.  Good enough to try to make it back in the Land of Readily-Available Groceries.

+ If the Jetboil ignitor is misbehaving (which it does more often than not), it’s real easy to light it with a lighter!

+ If you land in a campsite and the wind is blowing where your hammock is gonna be parked, make every effort to MOVE!  Last night was my coldest so far—not as uncomfortable as Lawyer’s Landing, but definitely the coldest, with the wind coming off of the Rapid River.  No sun, lots of wind, and rocks everywhere, giving the ground and surroundings a very high insulation value (R-value, as engineers call it).  NOPE.

Trail Magic: 

+ Met a guy fly fishing (and mountain biking—he had a clever PVC red holder rigged up) who offered me a sandwich and said I looked a lot less haggard than the last through-paddler he met.  Hurraaaay.

+ Saw a number of cute little camps along the Carry Road here, including one that belonged to the writer of We Took to the Woods, a famous memoir about her family’s time here.

[+ I later realized that the Through-Paddler first-hand account at the end of the official NFCT guidebook called out the Carry Road as the most frustrating portage of the trip.  I felt validated that someone else had as much trouble as I did…although my most frustrating portage by far was Mud Pond…]