Augusta / Finishing Maine’s Counties
Bradbury Mountain State Park to Seboeis Public Reserved Lands, ME | Maine’s State Capitol in Augusta | Katahdin Iron Works | Camping & Kayaking at Seboeis Lake | June 2024
This morning, we went about our morning routine and readied ourselves for today. Since we had changed our plans to come here, Bradbury Mountain, the day before, we needed to come up with a new route, things to do, and a place to camp for tonight. Thankfully, this campsite set us up for completing our “Maine” goal for this leg of vacation: visiting our last 2 counties in Maine! We have technically visited Maine twice, during the same trip in 2016: on our way to New Brunswick, we drove up the coast on US-1 and visited Acadia NP, and on our return from Canada we crossed on I-95, did some hiking, and knocked out all the Northern counties. This left a 2 county hole that has remained over the last 8 years, and we were very glad to finally be able to fill it! We got one of the counties just a few miles up the road, then made our way to Augusta where we got our final county in the state!
We celebrated our completion by driving to the state capitol building and going for a long walk in the park across the way. The park was designed by the same person who designed Central Park in NYC. It was a hot and humid day — the storms from the night before had done little to cool things down — but thankfully there was enough shade, and benches all around so we could all take a break when Charlotte wanted. Once we completed the loop, we grabbed lunch from the van and had a picnic. We met a mom and her two kids also having a picnic, and they stopped to give Charlotte some love. One of the kids asked if Charlotte lost her eyes because “someone farted on them.” Can’t say we’ve heard that before!
After that, we ran a couple errands in Augusta, then got back on the road heading North. We had found a lake where we wanted to camp tonight, and on our way there we stopped to see the Katahdin Iron Works historic site. This was right next to the start of the 100 Mile Wilderness conservation area, named for being the longest stretch of the Appalachian Trail to cross any major highways. It would have had some steep fees to camp in or even hike, but just stopping to see the historic site was free — we’ll save the hiking for if/when we do the Appalachian Trail. The Iron Works preserves a blast furnace from the late 19th century, and was easily recognizable to its similarity to Hopewell Furnace in Pennsylvania. We walked around the historic stone structures (of which there aren’t many considering the size of the operation) and were attacked by mosquitoes the whole way. This made us concerned about where we were planning to camp, but somehow the bugs were really only terrible here.
Our camping area for tonight was in Seboeis Public Reserved Lands, right on Seboeis Lake. There were a few dispersed sites, a cul-de-sac with room for 3 campsites, and a large parking area near the boat ramp. It was a bit busier than we had imagined for a Monday, but we were able to get a spot in the cul-de-sac. This was one of the first places on this trip that had a high potential for a moose sighting, but we didn’t see any. We joke that we can only ever see moose in Wyoming. Despite visiting and living in many areas of states and provinces where they roam, Wyoming is the only place we’ve ever seen them. Would we finally break that pattern on this trip, where we would be spending several weeks in their territory? Stay tuned…
We enjoyed a quiet evening here, with lots of Charlotte walks around the camping area and forest road, and a beautiful sunset. The next morning, we decided to go for a paddle in the lake. Seboeis Lake is quite large, but we just stuck to the Northern end near where we had camped. It all seemed like an ideal moose home, with shallow water and lily pads everywhere, but there were none to be seen. We probably need to get up closer to dawn to see them, but when dawn is in the 4AM time frame, is it really worth it? When we were finished, we packed up and got back on the road, headed for our next destination!
