Millinocket, Maine

Okay, I did six miles yesterday and I'm not hurting today so I am going to do another six today.

 

That's not my footprint. It's a track in the snow that kind of looks like a human footprint but there are toes, so the person would have had to be barefoot. Perhaps it's a baby bigfoot. Another possibility is that it's a bear track. Although it's longer than is usually seen in a bear track, I have found some examples of bear tracks that looked similar.

By the way, I made it through my second consecutive 6-mile hike. I have a blister on one foot and suffered from chafing but, otherwise, it wasn't so hard.

 

I posted the photos from my walk here because they are mostly of things within the town of Millinocket. But, since I'll be branching out in my walks to include places outside of town, I will be moving those posts and pictures to a thread in the Health & Wellness area entitled Walking For Exercise And Fun, or something of that sort.

 

I mentioned it in another thread, but we have a thing going on here in Millinocket right now, where our newly hired police chief has made a lot of waves. Ten of the eleven police officers we had here when he was hired have either resigned or been fired, and the assistant chief, who is a long-time town employee, having served as the animal control officer before becoming a police officer many years ago, has been on unpaid leave after an altercation in which the chief was highly insulting, even calling her the c-word that ends with a "t", which I can honestly say that I haven't heard anyone actually use since high school. I don't know what brought it on but he did this in front of several witnesses, some of whom had filed complaints even before she filed her own complaint. He resigned from his last job in Connecticut, where he was a police lieutenant, after being accused of sexual harassment, and was hired here as chief. Strangely, the assistant chief was the one to be put on leave.

The town just had a $90,000 judgment against it from another police officer for unjustifiable termination, and the assistant police chief's own case should be coming up soon. WABI-5, a Maine television station has a video about it on their site - here. It's not one that I can embed in the post, so you'd have to click on the WABI-5 link and notice the number of people who are wearing masks. The news report says nine of ten officers have left, but the number is actually ten of eleven, but they might not be considering the assistant chief, since she hasn't actually left; she's on unpaid leave.

 

I like our town manager. It seems that he's an awful town manager but I like the guy. He was a paperworker at the mill here and, when the mill closed, he went back to school and earned a degree, after which he was hired as the town manager for a town adjacent to where my camp is. After a few years, when an opening came up here, he returned home as the town manager. But it seems that he listens to all the wrong people.

 

I'm familiar with it, but it's fake news. It's not like the typical CNN-type fake news, but it's still not factual. All of the newspapers are reporting it as being in Millinocket too, but I know where the Big Moose Inn is, and it's not in Millinocket. The Millinocket post office delivers mail to a large rural area, as well as a few neighboring towns, but that that doesn't place them in the town limits. Mostly tourists and people vacationing at Baxter State Park go there. I've been there only once. The wedding was in East Millinocket, with fewer people, and the wedding reception was at a place known as the Big Moose Inn, which is about twelve miles northwest of Millinocket. Although the Millinocket post office delivers mail there, it's not even in the same county. It's in Piscataquis County, while Millinocket is in Penobscot County. Only one of the people who tested positive was from Penobscot County, the others were from southern Maine. They held the wedding reception at the Big Moose Inn because Piscataquis County had lighter restrictions than would have been in place in the southern part of the state, where most of the COVID cases were. Plus, nobody is even sick, as far as I am aware. They tested positive for the virus, and most people who test positive for the virus are not sick although, from the news reports, we're supposed to picture everyone who tests positive as being on their deathbed. Anyhow, there's no reason to believe that any of these people even stopped in Millinocket.

 

The people who tested positive aren't from here. They don't shop in our stores or eat in our restaurants, so I'm good, thank you. I wouldn't worry much about it anyhow, not any more than I worried about the flu every flu season. Viruses have always been with us, and if this is like any other virus, it is going to mutate several times on its way to a vaccine, which will probably be about as effective as the flu vaccine, which I don't get.

Just beyond the Big Moose Inn is Baxter State Park, the terminus of the Appalachian Trail, which brings in more than 50,000 people each year, but few of them stop in Millinocket. I don't worry myself about their health.

 

I know. It's just a sensitive topic because all of the news outlets are reporting it as being in Millinocket so now people are going to go crazier here than they have been. I also noted that pretty much everyone who is being quoted from Millinocket has been people who just moved here, like our library director, who has been here for only a few months and probably believes the Big Moose Inn is in Millinocket. How would he know any different? He's probably been hiding in his basement since he got here.

There was an argument on Facebook about it, with people insisting that it was in Millinocket because it has a Millinocket address. Well, people in Norcross have a Millinocket address too, but Norcross still isn't in Millinocket, although it's closer to Millinocket than the Big Moose Inn. In the Facebook group, one woman argued, "It's in Millinocket. It's right there on Millinocket Lake." However, Millinocket Lake isn't in Millinocket either.