The Moose Not The Mouse - Day 4 - Dirt Tracks And Trails

[roonlou]

3rd May 2009 Sunday

The room has electric blinds that block the views from the upper window – and I love the James Bond effect when we open them up first thing in the morning, revealing another slightly grey view across to the sea.

Now, this was to be our last morning of full on luxury, so we enjoyed a breakfast in bed of those tasty cinnamon strudel shreddies and some fresh fruit. Read the Sunday paper, surfed the net on the free wi-fi and watched some more of that old Food Network. We then danced about in the giant shower and packed up our belongings ready to relocate to our next new home.

We checked out with another member of non descript staff, and loaded up our wagon with the many many bags of clothing as the weather on this trip was supposed to be like your average British holiday, sun, rain, snow etc.

With Tom Tom programmed up, he promised the 180 mile trip would take 3 ½ hours, most of it on I95. The skies still grey above us, we headed off on the road, enjoying the very green tree lined road. We noticed spring activity seemed a little behind the UK, with many tree’s still bereft of leaves, and some others only just starting to bud up of blossom.

After an hour or so, we stopped at a visitors centre just before the toll booth, for a very well needed potty break. We also took the opportunity to purchase American style car snacks, including water melon flavoured sour candy, Starbucks’ double shot coffee, teriyaki beef jerky and the obligatory cheesy puffs. The car also seemed a bit peckish, so we treated her to a tank full of gas – only $28!



Then the journey continued, more inland and ever more scenic. Finally our travels on the interstate finished, and we were onto the smaller roads, driving through tiny little villages, some well maintained and pretty, some not so eye pleasing.

As the area seemed to be getting more rural, we asked Tom Tom for the location of a large supermarket, encase the ones at our destination weren’t as well stocked. So, slightly off route we headed to another Shaw’s store.

The supermarket itself was in quite a desolate area, but very well stocked, and we travelled up and down the isles searching for some basic goodies to tide us over for a couple of days.

Bags loaded into the car, we continued to our final destination, according to Tom Tom, only 30 miles away, but at least an hour’s drive – this put me in fear of the roads.

I need not of worried, yes the roads were a little pot holy and rough, it wasn’t as bad as anticipated, we arrived in the town of Greenville just before 3pm. The views of Moose Head Lakes were jaw dropping as we drove down hill. A beautiful outstretched lake lined by hills and mountains, with many little islands emerging from the mirror still waters – 32miles long, 300 islands, 518miles of shore line and 90000 acres of water. The 2nd largest freshwater lake totally confined in the areas of one state. We were also visually tempted at the opportunity of spotting Moose, as pretty much every house and store seemed to have pictures of them dotted about.



We stopped at Indian Hill shops to pick up some whiskey, and Roo also enjoyed playing with the guns in the sporting section. Very bizarre to find racks and racks of firearms lined up to play with, they even had pink ones for girls and little ones for kids.

We carried on and soon found the office / home of the people renting out our cabin, greeting by a barking dog and a friendly Sally. She graciously accepted our final payment on the property, and handed us many piece of paper consisting of directions to the cabin, hikes, fishing trips and moose spotting hints.



Back into town, and off to Wilson Pond which is where our new home was located. We had two different instructions to drive there, a summer and winter route. Sally had looked at our 4X4 and said we’d probably be okay for the winter route – okay?

We soon turned off a real road onto a dirt track – seems these dirt tracks would become a very common feature of this trip. Past a small grass airport with tiny planes that I would never bring myself to travel in – ever. Then we encountered a rather muddier, kinda scary part of the road, we managed to get through it, but there were some very strange noises from underneath the van.



Finally the directions guided us towards our cabin Sunrise Lodge, gently nestled in-between the fir trees, right beside the lake edge. As we let ourselves in through the very inadequate almost internal external door and into our little piece of heaven. The cabin itself was spacious, but quite dinky, with a wrap around raised deck with outstanding views across Wilson’s Pond. It was an open plan layout with open fire place, floor to ceiling windows, lounge and kitchen diner. On this level was a bathroom with giant tub and one king sized bedroom with a small window. There was a small steep staircase going down to the utility room with washer dryer, and another bedroom with two oversized bunk beds – and more floor to ceiling windows viewing that impressive lake.





On the top floor, again accessed by some very steep stairs, another bigger bathroom with spa tub, and the master gabled bedroom, with yes, you’ve guessed it, more floor to ceiling windows! And even a couple of chairs to enjoy that view some more.



It was all very rustic, from the sofas being made out of bits of tree and logs, tables made from more tree inclusive of bark, side tables just honed out of lumps of logs (watch out for splinters), cupboards with wonky doors and shelves, and even the toilet roll holders just basically twigs and stuff nailed together. If you’re not very good at DIY, I would suggest you style yourself on the “rustic” look. It was very homely though, and these little touches put smiles on our faces.



We quickly unpacked and set up in the master suite, a passing thought to the large windows, and the name of the cabin – Sunrise Lodge. Mmm, no curtains, mmm, big windows, mmm, no, sure that’s okay. Mmm.

Being our friendly moose apparently love hanging out at sunset, we decided to jump back in the car and head out to one of the garmented moose hangouts. As we were defiantly going to see some, we took cameras, binoculars and video camera to document the moment.

Off down our dirt track and onto a “proper” road briefly then that turned back into dirt track and off to Lazy Tom Bog. It was very pretty, even though the route there seemed quite industrial – think access route to logging area. As we scanned the horizon we spotted, well we spotted lots of things, but no moose. Maybe they’d been forewarned and were hiding from the British tourists, and would only be visible on paid tours – I mean; everyone has to earn a living.



Now with tummies rumbling we headed back to town, and chose the Black Frog to dine in, as out of the two restaurants located there, it was the open one. Very strange entrance into the place, almost like passing through someone’s hallway into the bar area.

We were seated in a water borne conservatory, it was decorated in the style of a dated greasy spoon café, but cleaner, there were half a dozen other people dining there.

We looked through the laminate menu, unsure what to have, when the waitress appeared to take our order. She suggested we sampled the Sunday special of pot roast with mash and carrots. We also had a diner salad, and scallops wrapped in maple syrup bacon – washed down with a couple of local brews.

The joys of a full stomach made us crave the cabin, so we headed the summer route back home to avoid the under car scrapping noise. This route however took us past some giant dogs hanging round a neighbours cabin, thank goodness it was still light as this would of scared the hell out of me.

Back in our wooden master piece, we attempted to light a log fire, it was pretty chilly, so hoped this would warm us up. Roo loves playing with fire, so carried on with the manly / cavemen business of lighting up, and then played with it some much it eventually went out. Not a problem, as I tweaked the thermostat up in the meanwhile.

Eventually with heavy eyelids we head to the top of the cabin for a night in our master suite giant non curtained windowed room. We snuggled under the chunky feather duvet and fell into a restless night’s sleep worrying about potential bear break-ins and general werewolf activity.

[Guest]

The cabin looks fantastic although a bit worrying about the flimsy door! Hope no bears come a calling!

[Guest]

Wow! The cabin looks fantastic!

[TrueBlue]

Love the look of your log cabin, looks like sheer bliss

[Guest]

Wow, the cabin looks fantastic.

[Strommie]

Love the cabin

[orlandosgr8]

The cabin looks fabulous.

[ethanjosh]

The cabin does look great , a long way from a Disney Luxury Hotel ...

[DIBBadmin]

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