August 17-20, 2008
We set off from Errol, NH on Sunday with the canoe piled with supplies for our 4-day outing on Lake Umbagog. Our destination was a remote campsite on a small island near the confluence of the Androscoggin and Megalloway rivers. We had the stiff wind at our backs for the trip into the island. Wow, I hope that turns around before we need to head back out! It appeared that we were being chased in by a storm. Nasty black clouds and strong gusts of wind. Every person that we passed - kayaker, motor boat, etc - all had to make a wise-crack about how deep we were riding in the water. We paddled 3.5 miles like our canoe was on fire to get to the campsite quickly, then we jumped out, set up the tent, got the fly over it, set up the tarp over the picnic table, got everything under it, and then... no rain. :-)
Monday was a bit better - very summer-like and warm. Monday night brought nasty thunderstorms which we could watch approach from miles and miles. The lightning show was like nothing we had seen before. The storms lasted long into the night. Tuesday and Wednesday were October-cold. We wore our Gortex a lot during those couple days for wind-block more than rain.
Sunsets were stunning and mornings were very foggy.
Our campsite was just as it always is. It's nice to come to a place where you know exactly what to expect.
Fishing was good! We caught pickerel, bass and lots of perch. You can get an idea of "Monday" vs. "Tuesday" weather in these pictures. All the fish except for the big pickerel were Tim's. Valerie caught the big fish of the trip, but the canoe is not conducive to "swapping fish for camera" so since Tim took it off the hook, he got the picture with it.
Wildlife was abundant!! This very small duckling was all alone. Hopefully, s/he can grow and fly before winter comes. The bald eagles are all over the islands. They had two fledglings this year. The sparrow is a Song Sparrow. Very different from the couple varieties that we usually see around our house.
It was a sad situation about the moose pictures. We went out around 6pm to do some evening fishing at Leonard Pond. We took the "take-a-picture-of-me-and-my-fish" camera. A little Olympus waterproof point-and-shoot. It wasn't up to the challenge of the long-range moose pictures, but we didn't want to spook her, so we kept our distance. We must have watched her for almost half an hour.
Spider webs are best photographed on the foggy mornings. Glad that we never see the actual spiders.
We really enjoyed the wildflowers and other plants. The first couple pictures are, we think, Common Bladderwort. They have a very thin stalk that comes from the pond floor to the surface, then they have (as Tim describes it) an "oil rig platform" that helps the flower balance on the surface. We've never seen anything like it before.
White Wood Asters
Pin cherries? Definitely not ripe yet.
Meadow Sweet?
Bunchberry
Blueberry
Yellow Pond Lily
Cotton Grass grows on small floating "islands" in some of the ponds. We don't really know if there is any dirt under these islands or not. They could just be plant matter that's built up on the surface, and now it's rich enough that other plants can grow there.
We could not identify these beauties
Marsh Skullcap
Don't know yet what these are either.
At the end of a fantastic vacation, we have to pack up and paddle out.
It was a rough trip out, as the wind was still really strong and pushing against the canoe. There was some frustration, possibly foul language before we got safely back to the boat launch on the Androscoggin River. Then, the car battery was DEAD. Thankfully, there was a conservation officer in the parking lot checking all the outgoing boats for milfoil, so she gave us a jump and we were on our way (after she cleared our boat)!
