A minivan was what we needed to throw all the stuff we had for the rafting and camping trip to Maine; Buick Tenzera, the lucky one was packed to the max. Six of us from Malden after much postponing and convincing finally left for Millinocket town in Maine on Saturday, June 15 at 8:30 AM. We were on track with our planned 6 AM start. It was almost 6 hours drive to the camping spot Big Moose Inn in Millinocket. Bad songs after bad songs continued to rock the van while I drove the car for 80% of the journey till 12:30 PM when we decided to stop for lunch at Milo's Pizza (name of the town was Milo). I think the chef over there got a unique opportunity to try our for the first time in her life a vegetarian pizza; yeah, the pizza was bad but somehow 3 of us managed to finish a large pizza.
Millinocket is a small town in Maine surrounded by forests, hills and mosquitoes. After checking in to the camp site, we pitched our tents and then left for Baxter State Park which was suggested to us by campground manager for hiking. The hike to Kathahdin Stream Falls was pretty easy one and took merely an hour to reach. I climbed down to a rock just beside the falls, it was a nice place to relax except again for the mosquitoes. A 20 minute descent down the hiking trail and we were back in the parking lot. We continued towards Daicey Pond and some other nearby ponds in the same park where we saw Moose. This was the first time I was seeing that animal and it looks like a strange combination of donkey and horse.
The camp fire at our camp site went on for a long time till the 2 logs of firewood burnt completely to ashes all the while eating, drinking, songs and arguing. After a quick bath in the morning, we started towards the start point for rafting in a bus arrange by North Country Rafting. They were the company whom we had booked the rafting with. The driver of the bus, a woman in may be late 30s greeting everyone with a warm smile, succeeded in starting the old bus after over 15 mins flop starts. That day also happened to be a random day picked by state officials to inspect the rafts for safety. They inspected the raft, suggested some changes and went away after ensuring their suggestions were implemented. It feels good that these people take safety seriously.
White water rafting trip on Penobscot river started with a class 3 rapid and then followed a class 4 rapid. This class 4 turned out to be best of the whole trip even better than the class 5 (thats what they said). The rapid was like a reduced balmuri falls and sitting in front is always exciting with water splashing with maximum force. The fall in rapid was followed by surfing when we took the raft against the direction of flow of the stream. At the point where water falls, it forms a circle which helps the raft to stay at the same position without being carried away by the stream flow. The class 4 rapid was followed dead water for more than an hour and we just enjoyed the slow raft pace and sceneries along the way. The water was very cold and could dive and stay in only for 2 mins before getting back into the raft. We went through a few more rapids of class 3-4 before breaking for lunch, a veggie burger and some pasta and we were all set to hit the class 5 rapid which was just at the start of second half. The second half started from the hydro station when they released 32000cc per second from the dam. I was expecting something more drastic and thrilling compared to first class 4 but the class 5 turned out to be a longer class 4. This was followed by a couple more class 4 and class 3s. The first half of 6mi took over 2 hours because of long stretches of dead water but the second 6mi took may be just over an hour. The second half was fast and exciting for the guys sitting in front. I moved to back of the raft in second half and it mostly felt like sitting in balcony and watching a rafting movie. The back seat is very stable and you hardly feel like falling off even in class 4s. Our guide(I forgot his name, starts with "S"!) was the best there and we felt he took us through best rapids of the 3 rafts that were in water there.
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The return trip to Boston was smooth without any incidents and we ended a great trip with tasty food from Spice n Hot.
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Check out the photos at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/shivaram.ms/MaineRafting
