Going Back In Time - Aroostook

Way back in 2011 we volunteered at Aroostook State Park in Presque Isle, Maine.  (See May - September 2011 blog).  We decided to drive on up, play a little disc golf, and see how the area has changed in 9 years.

Presque Isle is a three-hour drive from Green Lake NFH.  The weather was nice and clear so we stopped along the way to see Mt. Katahdin.  It has to be a pretty clear day in order to see it from the I-95 scenic overlook.

Katahdin is the highest mountain in Maine (5,267 feet).  The name means The Greatest Mountain.  It’s located in Baxter State Park and is the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. 

The Maine Solar System Model extends 40 miles along US Route 1.  In 2011, I blogged about these planets and had pictures of them all.  We only stopped at a couple this time through. 

Mark wasn’t playing disc golf in 2011 and this course wasn’t put in until 2015 so this was a new course for him.  It’s a nice course and he enjoyed playing it.

This land used to be a cattle farm.  Apparently, cattle ate apples and left apple seeds all over the area.  We saw over 100 apple trees and they were all loaded with apples. Mark tried a couple but found them to be hard and sour. Perhaps they weren't ripe yet. 

Our next stop was Aroostook State Park. 

This was our first “Park Host” position and we quickly realized that we didn’t care to be “park hosts” again.  Cleaning sites, painting flag poles, checking restrooms are fine with us, but it was the worst 5% of campers that made us decided park hosting wasn’t for us. 

Our old RV site.

We spent many evenings on Echo Lake fishing for horn pout (See July 10, 2011, blog).

We found Scott (the manager).  He was the manager in 2011.  We spent about an hour catching up with him before heading to lunch.

This is a very pretty park.

We found the same restaurant we had visited many times (Governor’s) and had a nice lunch before heading to our hotel.

The Aroostook National Wildlife Refuge is about a 45-minute drive from Presque Isle.  In 2011 we visited this refuge a couple of times and met their hosts (Sharon and Bill). We kept in touch through our blogs (Sharon wrote a blog until about 2 years ago).  We lost touch with them after they bought a house in Mexico and quit blogging.  We were surprised when Sharon left a comment on our blog about visiting them in Aroostook if we had the time this year.

It turns out they were flying back to Mexico the very next day so we quickly drove to the refuge for a short visit.

It was fun catching up.

The next morning we got up early to visit a couple of birding sites we had visited many times in 2011. Lakes Josephine and Christina were created to hold the sludge from food processing plants in the area, and are rich in nutrients. So they have a lot of insects and vegetation, and attract a lot of birds. We weren't here at the best time of year, but we saw a few birds. 

Common Yellowthroat

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Hooded Merganser juvenile

After another 18 holes at Maple Ridge we started back home

Maine farmers grow 320,000 acres of potatoes producing 13 billion pounds and most of them come from Aroostook County.

We saw many of these little stands along the road.

We bought a 5 pound bag of reds.

We had a fun short trip and headed back home.