Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument packs a punch

Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument is not the kind of park that you should go to if you're not prepared. It takes more than 30 miles just to get to the entrance gate, along roads that looked just like the one above. All the roads in this area are either current or ex-logging roads, and most are privately owned by the logging companies. Once you get to Katahdin Woods and Waters, you realize that it is created out of land that was logged about 25 years ago. Luckily it has been saved and put into the public trust. I'm not sure that all the people in the area see it that way, as there are a lot of National Park NO! signs about.

In fact the road that is in the photograph just above had signs on it that read, "This road's owner votes NO to national parks". I read into the issue a bit online and it seems that the people in the area want the paper industry to come back. They believe that, even though a National Park would create jobs, they would be low-paying jobs and that's not what they want. I guess that when you're from an area like we are, we know that good-paying manufacturing or steel jobs rarely ever come back.

The drive in to the park is extremely pretty. Here is a photograph off one of the private logging bridges. The logging owners do work to make certain areas usable by others, in fact just to the right of this photograph there is an area where you can picnic or put in boats, but you'll see next why I don't think it makes up for it.

This is the beginning of a forest being logged. The next one shows the product that they are after. You can see on the ground how many trees are uprooted and then just left. Only a few are taken out.

But then, as always, I am speaking from a place of privilege... Enough of being on my metaphoric soapbox. Here is what Katahdin Woods and Waters looks like.

This is the beginning of the 16-mile dirt-track loop road in one section of the park. Unlike most parks, this one is not continuous. It has several sections. This one is just the most developed, but as you're about to see that's not very developed at all. Just to the left of this sign there is an incredibly beautiful walk as well as a little jaunt down to see one of the ponds. The trails, views and bodies of water in this area don't have names... well no names on the map or in Google... because it's so incredibly new. It actually only came into being at the very end of the Obama administration. Below is an example of one of the ponds that we saw.

Here is Mike taking photographs of the same pond. They do have some infrastructure in place, as you can see by the fact that he sitting on one of the park benches that was created out of dead park trees.

After this short walk we got into the car and went to find somewhere to park for the evening. Technically you need a permit to be inside the park overnight but we tried to get one and couldn't figure out where or how it was done. We just hoped that we could ask for forgiveness instead of permission should be run into someone who cared. I can't tell you how glad I am that we did! As we were driving up to the second parking area on the loop road, we drove up a fairly steep hill and all I could see was that it's going to plateau out. I hoped that we would be rewarded with an amazing view. I think this picture says it all.

Oh, but the even better part is that we could see it from inside the campervan!

I can only imagine that if we come back to this area again in another year or two we won't get this opportunity again. So let me say that we made the best of it. Here's us eating dinner looking at Mt. Katahdin.

Dinner was awesome tonight. We had a bit of time and so I made pasta with mushrooms, onions and cheese. Just like at home, cooking in the van is one of my favorite things to do. It's just a little trickier to get it to be good. I don't exactly have a sink to wash up in, so you have to be super neat.

For those of you who don't know, this mountain is a bit of a special place for both Mike and me. Mt. Katahdin is where the two of us intend to end the Appalachian Trail. I guess that we both enjoyed seeing it from this view because the next time we see it we will be on top and have completed our 2,100+ mile hike.

The views are not the only cool thing about this spot. It also had the best privy we've ever seen in a State or National Park! It was practically unused! You can see the floor and it was pristinely clean.

This should give you an idea about how few people nave actually visited this park since its inception. I know that we were here on a Thursday, but even on the Friday we only saw three people who were not either a park ranger or employed by the park service.

Also someone sprung for air fresheners and toilet paper that even my Mom couldn't say wasn't soft enough! Have to admit it was blissful to have this right outside the campervan. The only thing that would have made it better was a shower.

On Friday we decided to go and look for a plane wreck that is in Katahdin Woods and Waters. The plane is called the Sea Fury. We did have our GPS as well as a park map, but unfortunately the map is extremely primitive and in retrospect we're not entirely sure that the plane's location was marked accurately. We even called our parents for help to look for GPS coordinates online as there was almost no service in the entire park. To no avail... there were no GPS coordinates to show where the wreck is located. Luckily that really didn't matter in the long run because tramping around in this near pristine wilderness was more than enough for us.

In the photograph above you can see an actual Spring that is feeding this swamp area. I have never seen an area where the water comes up quite like this. If you ever had to drink water that you couldn't pre-treat or filter, this would be a pretty good bet.

It's really the little things in this park that blew us away. There were so many mushroom, lichen and moss species to be seen. This one was actually fruiting. That would be the red sections.

We also saw a lot of evidence of moose. No actual moose but prints, poop and a tree that a moose would have knocked over with its antlers. Oh and these...

On our walk to find the airplane wreck we were following logging roads that have been left to be reclaimed by nature. There were beautiful ponds with more frogs and tadpoles in them that I have seen in a long time. It goes to show how clean the environment is here. We also saw an Alligator Snapping Turtle, Macrochelys temminckii. Though if you know anything about those he was fast enough to get out of our way and I wasn't able to get a photo. After many miles of walking and looking, we decided that the wreck had evaded us and it was time to leave.

But before we left the park, we decided to go down one more trail. Here is a view of one section of the trail. You can see how narrow it is, indicating that very few people have walked down it. Also there are things like this right along the edge of the trail showing that no one has touched them.

This is the first area and the last area that you come to in Katahdin Woods and Waters. As we left, there was a guy and his dog setting up to camp for the weekend. I think he was glad we were going. If you come out here, chances are you want solitude.