Millinocket, Maine

It was a beautiful day and time for another walk. I had my wife drive me to the beginning of Old Medway Road which, as you might expect, was part of an old route from Millinocket to Medway. It was a 5.5-mile walk. About four miles of it is pretty much undeveloped, except for a few cabins and a rafting company, but you can't even see their buildings from the road. The road follows the West Branch of the Penobscot River, although it's mostly wooded between the road and the river. Then, I come up to the town's trash transfer station, the town's compost area, where people dump brush and grass clippings and the town turns it into compost that is free for the taking for residents, the airport, the cemetery, and then we're back in town, although the whole thing is actually in the town limits.

 

I'm not sure why it doesn't post them in order. The file names are in order.

So, that was a 5.5-mile walk. I get out of shape in the winter when no one wants to go for a walk, not only because of the weather but because Millinocket does not enforce its sidewalk clearing ordinances. I'm not complaining, mind you, because I don't want to have to shovel the sidewalk in front of my house either. In the spring, I have to work myself into it, and it helps to bring a camera with me because if I am looking for things to take pictures of, I'm not thinking about how far I've walked, how far I still have to go, and how much my feet and legs hurt. I actually took a hundred pictures but decided not to bore you with all of them. A lot of them were just of the road in front of me, which looked pretty much like the road behind me. I feel good now but tomorrow my legs will probably be sore. Maybe the day after that, I'll have Michelle drive me up six miles north on the Baxter State Park road, and walk back from there. Today, she was kind enough to driver over and bring me some water about 2/3 of the way through, and she took my jacket too because it was too warm to wear it, despite there being some snow on the ground yet.

 

A chainsaw artist did seven of those from fallen or cut trees along that route. Unfortunately, someone cut most of them and took them, either to sell or to put in his camp.

 

It's too cold to do a six-mile walk today so I stayed in town, but I walked quite a few blocks.

 

I just got back from a six-mile walk. I didn't start getting sore until I got back in town, and I'm still not too sore. I think I'll stick with the six-mile walks until I can do that without having to rest up for two days afterward, then extend it to seven.

 

I didn't take a lot of pictures because much of it all looked the same and because I spent a great deal of my walk talking to my son and his wife on the phone. They are living in California, where he was raised. He is still married to a girl he dated in high school and has two grown sons, one with two kids of his own.

 

I walked part of the way back on a snowmobile trail that roughly parallels the road. My shoes got wet so I had to call for my wife to bring me another pair, so I walked the road the rest of the way.