Rusticatin'

We're back from our annual Labor Day vacay, this time taken way up North at Beaver Cove, Moosehead Lake, Maine, where men are men and spend most of their time lazin' on the deck.

Peggy and Fred took a 3-hour cruise on the steamship Katahdin - highly recommended - which covered less than half of the 40-mile Moosehead Lake.

During his tour narration, our captain noted that the lake trout population, known locally as "togue," had been virtually wiped out because some idiot - or group of idiots - had introduced Yellow Perch into the lake. When I was a kid in the `60s, it wasn't unusual to catch a dozen or more togue in one day's fishing. Tragically, all gone now, and probably not to come back.

While visiting the quarterdeck, I mentioned to the captain I grew up on Sebago Lake, the second largest lake in Maine. "Oh, that pond?" the captain grinned at me.

We found that the only direct route to Moxie Falls involved a route that personified the phrase 20 miles of bad road. About 5 1/2 miles in on a badly rutted, washed out road with large rocks poking out just waiting to take out things without which our long-suffering Murano would probably not run, we met a beat-up pickup heading in the opposite direction. "You can't go down there, the road's terrible," the driver called.. "You couldn't make it without a 4-wheel drive. Where you headed?"

"Moxie Falls," I replied. "Maybe, I should turn ..."

"We're going right by it," he interrupted. "Follow me." And with that he sped off on another road that led off God Knows Where which a) was even worse than the one that we were on and b) our GPS, which had gamely sent us down the original road didn't even recognize as a road.

In fact, the GPS - which we've anthropomorphized with the name "Tommy," gave up trying to navigate us, except to point an arrow at where we had been, apparently in the hope we'd recover our senses and return to Known Territory. Which we eventually did after about a mile or more of following the Mad Mainer, who blasted along the road at upwards of 40 miles an hour as I crawled over ruts and rocks. As his dust trail disappeared into the trackless wastelands, I found a spot to turn around, not an easy thing to do, and headed back to where Tommy's arrow pointed. After a long long long time, we finally made it back to the point where Tommy was willing to acknowledge that there was a road there, such as it was, and then only had to spend another 5 1/2 miles crawling back out to the paved road.

We'd finally make it to Moxie Falls the following day after Peggy plotted out a circuitous route that covered about 60-odd miles to a destination that was about 20 miles away as the crow flies but, by God, had the benefit of being entirely upon pavement.

Moxie Falls is very beautiful, if a little difficult to visit.

We also found the lodge my family stayed at during our regular visits to Moosehead in the `60s - Maynards. Already old when I first came there, Maynards was established in the early 1920s, the place is virtually unchanged in 2008, the only noticeable difference that I could find is that the cabins now have a full bath. Back in 1964 it was an outside shower and an outhouse.

And we did many other things, the things you do when you're on vacay in the Great North Woods: We visited Kamp-Kamp, the largest store in Greenville, Maine where Peggy longed for moose antlers and Fred for a set of Classic Illustrated Comics that could have come straight from my bunk at Maynards. We bought hand-picked blueberries and blackberries and fresh-baked goods for dessert every night. We hiked the Lily Pond State Park, read about local things in the local paper - including the kids fined for leaping jay-naked off the Black Frog restaurant dock.

And mostly we relaxed, 'cause that's what it's all about.

In the Great North Woods For a Spell - Part 1

We did a couple of things differently this year. First, we went back to the same place a year later. While we have a handful of spots - almost all in Maine - that we return to regularly, I can't remember our ever vacationing at the same place two years in a row.

Second, we stayed at the same place for the entire trip; very unusual for the Bals, who tend to flit around like birds on their vacays.

But this was a "destination vacation," as Peggy put it. And it was.

We were so enthralled by the Great North Woods last year, and so disappointed that we had only stayed a handful of days that one - or maybe both of us - floated the idea of returning to Lopstick Cabins this time around for a full week. Unlike last year though, where reservations were easy, almost all of Lopstick's 35 cabins/camps had already been booked for the Labor Day weekend as early as June. But Peg was finally able to secure us a so-called "cabin," called Kiley that to me sounded as if was going to be a bit funky and run down, given that we were paying less for something larger than the cabin we had last year. But it was a choice of Kiley or nothing, so we crossed our fingers and did the 4-hour drive up to Pittsburg.

If you clicked on the link, you'll see that I had nothing to worry about. For reasons that still mystify me, the very economical Kiley cabin was more like a spacious camp, extremely private, and with a spectacular view of First Lake. Apparently, the camp's lack of fireplace and/or jacuzzi, both of which amenities came with the unnamed "Cabin 6" that we had stayed in the year before, lowered the price.

It would have been nice to have a fireplace, but we didn't really miss it.

Ahoy! Ahoy!

"Do you want to do something different and take a boat out on the lake tomorrow?" I asked Peggy innocently. And just as innocently, she answered, "Yes."

Now, I probably haven't been in - let alone touched - an outboard motor boat for some 40-years, but at one time in my blooming youth I spent most summers in and renting such boats on Sebago and Long Lake in Maine.

Indeed, most days my commute was taking a 12-footer powered by a lil' 25-hp from one end of Sebago to the other, through the Songo Locks ("But there's just one," Peg said in confusion when I finally took her to the Locks) into Brandy Pond and then under the drawbridge to Long Lake and the seaplane base and marina my father co-owned. Because we rented to turistas whose first exposure to boating was oft times when I walked them through the intricacies of a 10-hp Evinrude, I also spent an inordinate amount of time on the water finding and/or rescuing either them or our boat from whatever trouble they had managed to get themselves into. This could include replacing broken shear pins, towing abandoned boats back from wherever they had been beached, collecting day trippers who had gone too far, too long and weren't going to make it back before dark without help, and so on.

So, while many things outdoorsy can throw me into a full, nervous Woody Allen-like tizzy, I'm fairly comfortable on the lake, having dealt with much a lake can toss at you while at a tender age. Which would come in handy.

Peggy and I struck out about 11 a.m. on a warm cloudy morning after one of the lodge hands had walked me through running the little 8-hp motor. Not much had changed in the engineering over 40 years, so we puttered off without trouble. While First Connecticut is the 8th largest lake in New Hampshire, at 2800 acres it's about a tenth of the size of Sebago, so I figured I could easily motor us around the perimeter in a couple of hours. We were at the northern end when it started to sprinkle and the sky blackened.

"Not too bad," I thought, but decided to push back across the lake to the more civilized side, as we had nothing on our side except trees and rocks, and I didn't want to try to beach and hole up there if needed. If it had been five minutes later, I would have taken my chances beaching wherever we could, as the storm just blasted onto the lake, with the wind picking up, lightening bolts crackling around us , rain cascading down and the waves starting to white cap. With us now in the middle of the lake.

Not the first time I've been caught in a bad storm on a lake, and this was one of the worse. The rule is you definitely don't want to be the tallest thing on a flat surface in a metal boat. You get off the water as quickly as you can, and you find what shelter you can. Thinking of Sebago and summer camps, I told the brave Peggy we were heading to the closest cabin's beach. Occupied or not, I figured we could camp on their porch until the storm passed. But a Good Samaritan spotted us running in, waved us to his landing, a few hundred yards further down, and offered us - to continue the Dylanesque theme - shelter from the storm inside his camp, which we gladly took.

Of course, all I had done was beach the boat, and I had forgotten to lift the engine. The wind was blowing so fiercely that it was obvious that unsecured the boat would be sailing off to parts unknown, probably ruining the prop in the process. So even though our Good Samaritan told me he'd fire up his boat and help me recover ours later, I decided I couldn't get much wetter, and went back out and lashed our little boat to his dock.

About 1/2-hour later, the storm had passed, and the very wet Peggy and Fred thanked our Good Samaritans, took our very soggy selves back to the boat, and puttered off yet again.

About 5 minutes out, the motor died.

After running through a check list of "what could be wrong," it finally occurred to me that the smell of gasoline might not be a flooded engine and indeed, I had succeeded in somehow kicking the gas line loose while getting in a more comfortable position.

So much for the Mighty Sailor. Chastened, I rehooked the line, the engine - now with fuel - sputtered to life, and back we went to Lopstick to get dry clothes. We'd bop out one more time onto the lake later that afternoon, but with still-threatening skies, never fully completed our planned circuit.

But someday we will. And that ends Day One. Still to come - Peggy and Fred find the proverbial Twenty Miles of Bad Road.

Our Trip (as interpreted by Bob Dylan)

A trip summary by cue card a la Don't Look Back.



via Dylan Messaging.com.

We're So Officially On Summer Hiatus

To your left: Bear laughs at stupid human interaction with computers and mind-melds directly with the laptop.

Even though we have a bit to go before we go, I'm putting fhb officially on hiatus for the next few weeks, hoping that the "official" moniker will prompt me to start posting again when we get back from vacay. In the interim, until I do, you can currently find more regular postings at a Series of Tubes and fairly regular postings at Dreamtime.

See you - as the song goes - in September.