The next day Dan led Cyrus and I on an ATV ride up a nearby ridge to try and spot some wildlife. Dan gave me a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun to carry. He said it was loaded with a mixture of slugs and buckshot rounds. I asked him if there was one in the chamber. "Always" he replied. It was somehow more comforting than the bear spray I'd been carrying previously. The ride was crazy. We rode up a trail so steep I had to stand up and throw my weight as far forward as possible so I wouldn't tumble backwards. Then we rode through a marsh with huge puddles of water, which the ATVs handled surprisingly well. There was lots of thick brush that made me wish I'd worn gloves. Eventually we got to the top of a big hill and took in some amazing views.
We didn't spot any wildlife besides mosquitoes, but the views were worth the trip. It was so cool to look in every direction for miles and see nothing but wilderness. I know it's nothing compared to what Alexander Supertramp went through, but it was good enough for me.
Our third day Cyrus and I felt like doing something productive so we decided to built a raft and float down the river.
It took us a couple hours to gather logs and lash them all together. It was a quick job, but she looked sea-worthy.
It floated pretty well with no one standing on it.
We took it into a deeper section of the river and I tried to get on, but it sank straight to the bottom. There was no way we could both ride it, so I got a big 8 foot stick and used it to balance my weight so that the raft could move over the river bed. We set up video cameras and got some good footage of me trying to navigate the treacherous waters of the Totalanika. I made it a few hundred feet down river, but when I got into faster flowing water, the raft started coming apart so I bailed and dragged it to shore. We pulled it back to the starting point, but never bothered trying to fix it. A couple days later we were hit with a storm and the river rose quickly, taking our raft somewhere downriver. I think the wood we used wasn't dry enough. Bear Grylls from the Discovery Channel made it look so easy on TV.
We tried our hand at panning for gold one day. It's not easy. They have this big machine called a dredge that digs a hole in the river and they sift through the stuff it pulls out. I found a bit of pyrite, and Cyrus found a few flakes of gold. The guys weren't finding enough to cover the expenses of them working there, so the property owner pulled them out a little while after we left.
The weather was pretty nice while we were there, but the afternoons usually brought quick thunderstorms. One day it hailed pretty badly for at least 15 minutes. And it never quite gets dark up there at this time of year. The sun dips just below the horizon and then comes right back up after a short while.
A Lighthouse Tour in Southern Maine
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The next day Dan led Cyrus and I on an ATV ride up a nearby ridge to try and spot some wildlife. Dan gave me a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun to carry. He said it was loaded with a mixture of slugs and buckshot rounds. I asked him if there was one in the chamber. "Always" he replied. It was somehow more comforting than the bear spray I'd been carrying previously. The ride was crazy. We rode up a trail so steep I had to stand up and throw my weight as far forward as possible so I wouldn't tumble backwards. Then we rode through a marsh with huge puddles of water, which the ATVs handled surprisingly well. There was lots of thick brush that made me wish I'd worn gloves. Eventually we got to the top of a big hill and took in some amazing views.
