Took a week and went up to Bethel, ME with Mrs. Moose for some down time.

Young girl was doing chainsaw sculpturing at Kittery Trading Post where we stopped on the way to our Bethel, ME vacation.

Got a picture of Bernie Sanders while in Maine.

The road less traveled by... Going into a slow, rough trail. This section wasn't too bad. The rest...

White Mountains of New Hampshire. This was my first interstate ride. Went from Upton, ME to Berlin, NH.

 

Roxbury/Andover, Maine trails.

Returning to the Upton, ME parking area. Decided to take a two-track through thick forest. Lots of water bars that you could get your whole quad in before beginning to climb out.

River going through Coos Canyon. (Pronounced Co as in co-pay and oss pronounced like laws. Getting used to the phone. Sorry about the fingertip.

Looking south towards Coos and Roxbury/Andover beyond.

 

Ellis Pond, Andover, ME. About a 1/2 hour trip back to the parking area.

Mooselookmeguntic Lake. Tried three different routes to get up to Rangeley, ME. Put 250 miles in 3 days of riding. Got within 20 miles. It's tough up there because trails go through private property, and logging companies' lands and roads. 2 of the main trails we needed to get to Rangeley ended up being closed. Not bad for my first attempts at getting up there.

Lower Richardson Lake. We are in a drought in most of New England. Droughts look different than droughts out west.

82 year old contestant at the Oxford Country Fair. In the modified class your chainsaw must look like an off the shelf saw. They then modify the engines to run on nitrous oxide. The Unlimited class alllows pretty much any modification as long as it is a saw with a bar and chain. After warming up the saw the contestants turn it off and place it on the ground. They have to put their hands on the "log", wait for the countdown, start the saw, cut once down, once up, and once down again, within a six inch end of the wood. The fastest contestants in the unlimited class were able to hit times around 3.2 seconds. Was cool to watch.

 

Nice pics Moose. It looks like a great place to ride.

 

It truly is a rider's paradise up there. Many of the Maine towns allow ATVer's to ride right into town and get gas, food, and lodging. Northern NH now has a really good trails system too. My dream is to see the trail systems all linked up so that I could ride from the VT/NH border, across Northern NH, into Maine and at least to Moosehead Lake. Both states are putting a lot of resources into the trail systems but a lot of land is owned by private landowners who are kind enough to have the trails run through their property. A lot of times these trails get closed because of people not behaving and doing things like going through drainages that are part of the trail system, going off trail in general, and breaking rules. At least where we had to take detours it wasn't a full trail closure. The logging companies make or repair many of the roads that act as trails or connectors up there and they have to close the trails so no one gets injured by the workers or their machines. I've been way out in the middle of nowhere and come up to loggers working. What is supposed to happen is that the riders stop, and wait until the loggers wave them by. I heard as story recently where a logger was loading a truck with a log picker and a bunch of idiots on dirt bikes went right under the boom loaded with logs. By God's grace they weren't hurt but the logging company said no more dirt bikes.

 

That looks great time Moose, especially with your wife. Love the scenery and some events you captured.

 

Thanks, Bengear. Wife only rode with me one day. She did some shopping on other days and met me back at the parking lot. We did have a good time and I'm probably going to go back up to that area next year around the same time.