Quick Penobscot River trip
Sep 16
Nate called me today and wanted to take a quick Kayak trip, I logged onto http://maps.live.com/ to plan a route. I found the perfect area that would only take a few hours and would be a mixture of leaves, dams and cityscape. We started out in Orono, near Ayers Island and would end at the Sea Dog in down town Bangor. Here’s a map overview of the trip.
We started out at 5PM, the weather was in the high 70’s, no wind and clear skies. Some of the leaves have started to change which is great. Most of the river was very calm due to an unexpected dam upstream. I had no idea it was there until we came upon a large white sign with red bold text stating, “DANGER, DAM EMINENT”. I would have taken photos of the 100+ year old mill / dam but the current was too strong to not hold onto the paddle. We kayaked around looking for some sort of way around this dam, on the left hand side of the river was walled with a slope of ledge, there was a tiny ladder that led up to a cable cart system. On the right hand side was the old mill but it sat over a portion of the dam with one ladder. We decided that the right hand side was the best course of action; we had to hold and help each other up the ladder to prevent the current from taking our kayaks. After that ordeal I found a man in the mill washing his car, he had a surprised look on his face, I think he wondered how I got passed the barbed wired fence surrounding the complex, I explained my situation and asked if there were a way around this dam. It turns out that there’s a gate on the other end of the complex that needed to be unlocked and that he would let us through. The sunset was beautiful on the river.
After getting through the gate we had to carry our kayaks down a slope of man placed cut ledge and through some bushes, we were happy to see some fast moving water, probably class II due to the dam. I helped Nate get into the rapids and took photos of him in action. I got in a little ways down because he was already in the water. We made it to Bangor and kayaked past the hospital that I work at, it was an interesting sight to see it from the water. At this point it was around 7:30PM and the sun had set. We made it to the Bangor Waterfront, one of Nate’s friends was fortunately there to assist us in getting back home, we did not want to leave the kayaks there to pickup my car.
