Sun Bathing in the Great White North – Suits Optional

Our Second Annual Trek to the Great White North added another couple this year—besides Jim and Lisa Nowak and ourselves, we brought along John and Suzanne Cimochowski. Since an important part of the trip includes the camaraderie of a six to seven hour transit from Woodstock to Greenville, ME we decided to squeeze into a single vehicle for the trip. That meant borrowing a vehicle that could seat six from Lisa’s sister and then packing the equipment and ourselves into and on to the SUV…Lisa had to hold things in while we closed the door…maximizing the available space.


We headed out of Woodstock late Friday afternoon…stopped at the Cracker Barrel in Wrenthan, MA to begin carbo-loading for the weekend…and then on to the Morris’ in Standish, ME to spend the evening. James and Stephanie have been very gracious in opening their home to us as a resting place along the way…and it is a nice break in the travels. A warm fire was provided for the ladies and the gentlemen retired to the pool room for some lessons from James (he did finish the evening with the most pennies).


Saturday morning we were up and on the road by 6 am…on our way to Greenville and the Hundred Mile Wilderness. The three hour trip went by fairly fast with some story-telling along the way…the Cimochowski’s exposed to us some of their adventures in Mexico…good stories all around, although we barely covered the topic.


Breakfast was at Auntie Em’s Diner in Greenville (more carbo-loading) and we then drove in to the Winter Parking Area. Chuck James (the Manager at Little Lyford Pond Camp—LLPC) arrived on a snowmobile soon after we pulled into the lot. He had a sled that would carry a bag for each of us plus our sleeping bags.



 



Besides the luggage, Suzanne was going to ride into the camp iinstead of snow-shoeing so she put on a helmet and rode off with Chuck.




It wasn’t as windy this year, but we still bundled up to start heading out on the trail…

We started along the Katahdin Ironworks (KI) Road and after about a quarter mile we turned onto the Hedgehog Gate Trail… The trail was fun and we seemed to make good time…stopping at the same rock outcropping as last year for lunch (packed for us by Auntie Em’s)…

it wasn’t long before we were stripping down to low layers of clothing. and then on into LLPC. Overall we snow-shoed for 7 miles (11.3 km) and were on the trail for about 3.5 hours.

We also had a visitor to the camp…just before dinner.  Out on the compost pile a fox came by to check the scraps and see what was being served.  It seems that he is a regular visitor.

We had three separate cabins along the back side of the camp and Chuck had already delivered our bags to one of them, so it was easy to split up our gear and settle into our cabins…before getting together for cocktail hour. Saturday dinner was a full turkey dinner with all the fixin’s! The turkey was moist, the homemade sage stuffing and mashed potatoes outstanding, and there was plenty of gravy and cranberry sauce to go around…more carbo-loading…but what a way to load.

After dinner we met up in Jim and Lisa’s cabin to play some cards (not John’s favorite pastime, so he barely played along…but he was a good sport)…and then we had reserved the wood-fired sauna for 9 pm. So although it was single digits cold outside we put on our bathing suits and sweated out our aches in 150 degree dry air (65 C for our friends in Oz)…you could only last about 20 minutes in the heat, but it certainly relaxed the muscles.


We were all then off to our cabins for a good night’s sleep.


The cabins have all been renovated and resealed recently so they were tight. The woodstove, with the damper closed down as far as possible, kept the cabin so warm that we needed to crack open a window at the peak of the cabin and crack open one of the side windows as well. Even then it stayed fairly warm.

We woke up Sunday morning to a couple of inches of fresh snow, so after breakfast we got Suzanne on snow shoes for the first time and we all headed out for a trip around First and Second Pond.

It was snowing lightly while we were out, which made it seem even more quiet and beautiful to be on the trail. The three mile loop had us back to LLPC around lunch time and we brought our pack lunches to the Lodge to eat together.


After lunch there was a little down time—power naps—before five of us (Suzanne enjoyed her first snowshoeing experience of the morning, but that was enough for the day) headed back out for an afternoon jaunt.


We headed out away from the ponds for a 2.5 mile (4 km) loop towards the Gulf Hagas and back along the Upper Valley Road.


When back at LLPC we fell into our routine of dinner, sauna (we signed up for an earlier time this evening), card playing and then off to bed. A great day away from everything including sports on TV…so just like the Patriots…we didn’t show up for the game.

Monday morning was fairly clear and cold (10 degrees F or -12 C) plus some wind that made it feel even colder. After breakfast we packed up our cabins and left our bags for the snowmobile / sled to carry out. John joined Suzanne on the snowmobile for a ride out so at least the car would be warm and mostly packed by the time we got there.

Recycling some of the “empties…”

We snow-shoed out along the Upper Valley Road and then along the KI Road…instead of traveling through the woods. At 6.2 miles (10 km) it was a little shorter than the Hedgehog Gate Trail so we were back at the parking lot by 12:30 pm.


There were a few stops on the trip back, as well as a few naps…but we made it back to Woodstock around 7:30 pm. A great adventure to the Great White North—it seemed to compare favorably to the Cimochowski’s adventures in Mexico—with only some windburn on exposed areas!