Our trip took us from the house to first stopping at the NTC clubhouse for lunch. John & matt showed up and they decided to come along with us for the ride. We left the clubhouse and turned up the the pole line and onto ITS 86 at Grant Brook. We crossed the West Branch River and turned off the main trail onto the Passamagamet Lake trail (no one fishing today). We crossed the lake and traveled the narrow trial onto Joe Francis Deadwater. We proceeded thru the thoroughfare onto First Debsconeag Lake. We got onto the trail at the end of the lake and cut across ITS 86 traveling on another narrow woods trial onto Second Debsconeag Lake. I stopped for a moment and told Shelby how Grampy Lane used to love coming here in the summer and the winter to fish. I told her how he always brought me along when I was a little tyke.
We continued our sled ride down the lake and headed up over the hill onto Third Debsconeag Lake. We headed over to the cove where the trail to the Beaver Deadwaters started. This is a long narrow trial that took us across 2 small deadwaters enroute to Rainbow Lake. Shelby was doing an absolutely great job on her Phazer negotiating the narrow woods trails. We arrived at the upper end of Rainbow Lake. We stopped for a bit and I told her how Mom and I got into a little mess on this lake one winter in the middle of a thaw
We continued down the lake past the Webber Camps and connected onto the Chesuncook Pond trail. We proceeded thru another narrow trail out onto the pond whee we stopped and discussed our travel plan. We turned around and got back out onto Rainbow and headed down towards the dam at the end of the lake. We stopped for a few minutes and I told Shelby how Gramp used to take me in here on snow sled thru the woods. It was an old trial and we used to have to cut allot of trees out of the way so we could get thru back in those days. Gramp used to love those types of trails.
We traveled down yet another narrow trail until we reached the intersection of the Nahmakanta Lake Camps and Rainbow Stream. John took a nice photo of Shelby and I on the bridge across Rainbow Stream. We took the trail down towards the lake and the sporting camps. When we reached the camps I took Shelby over to the camps and showed her where mom and I used to stay when we took our vacations over here.
We then headed down Nahmakanta Lake and took a short break about 3/4's of the way down the lake. I told Shelby that this was the spot where Mom did a loop de loop on her snow sled one day when she hit a patch of glare ice. The ice fishermen where clapping their hands as she must have put on quite a show going around in circles and keeping the sled upright. Of course I missed all the action being ahead of her on this ride.
We got down the end of the lake and took a trail that brought us out onto ITS 86 and we rode a brief way and took a side trail down to Fourth Debsconeag Lake. We rode by the sporting camps that Chewonki now owns. The camps are rustic but are being taken care of pretty well now. I showed Shelby the tall ledges covered in ice and snow that protrude along the backside of the lake.
We continued on to the trail that would take us to Third Debsconeag Lake and head us towards back home. We got onto the lake and headed out around the point where the Campbell family has a set of camps. We reached the end of the lake and traveled a narrow trail to the intrestection of ITS 86 again. Matt and John had a hot date to their Mom's house for a big supper so they smoked it back to town . Shelby and I chatted for a bit and then started homeward at a good pace.
Unfortunatley Dad missed a turn and added about 12 miles onto our trip. We got back to Millinocket Lake at the dike and took a break. I could see Shelby was starting to feel the effects of our long day. We saddled up and headed for the pole line trail not knowing the final brutal miles of trail ahead of us. The trails were very rough showing evidence of allot of sled traffic. We pulled in past the Northern Timber Cruisers Clubhouse proceeding to Currie's Pits and the bridge across Millinocket Stream .
After crossing thru the "pits" we got onto the Jerry Pond Trail which took us the last brutal 2 miles home. Landing in the backyard at 6:30 PM Shelby announced she had made her longest ride ever.....a whopping 92 miles!
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