July 30, 2019 Millinocket, ME (day 3)

 

It was a sunny, 86 degree day when we left the campground to take a drive on the Katahdin Woods and Waters Scenic Drive.  It takes you through some of the most natural landscapes on Route 11 that Maine has to offer.  It is 89 miles long and is a newly created national monument in Maine.  We weren't doing all of the drive since some of it is in the park and we drove on that yesterday.  We traveled north towards the north entrance of Baxter State Park.

We drove on Highway 11 out of town to Medway and picked up I-95 north.  This portion of the interstate is designated "scenic".   The highway was pretty empty of cars.

  We stopped at a scenic overlook for Mt. Katahdin, but it was so hazy that it was hard to see.

We left the interstate at Highway 11 at the town of Sherman.  Along the highway there were a couple of small towns and many Amish farms. You can recognize Amish farms by the lack of farm machinery or vehicles.

These signs were seen along the way to alert drivers to watch out for Amish buggies.

In fact, we saw this woman and her baby coming up the hill on her way to town.  It must have been a hard job for the horse because it was a steep hill.

We turned onto Highway 159 just north of the town of Patten on our way to Baxter State Park.  As we drove north, we got a clearer view of the mountains.

I had done some research on the Katahdin Woods and Waters Scenic Byway.

It is a newly created national monument in Maine and the highways we traveled on today are part of that byway.  We continued north to the towns of Mt. Chase and Shin Pond, where the highway cuts between two ponds.

We turned around after awhile because we didn't have time to go further.  We were looking for moose habitat and moose along this highway.  On our drive back through Sherman, we found the Amish lady and her buggy.

She was "parked" at the Dollar General Store.

The road took us high on the bluff via this hill. 

From the top, we could see the Katahdin Range, but some of it was still hidden in the haze. You could barely see the outline of the mountains off in the distance.

 We got back to the campground as the temp hit 91 degrees, so it was off to the pool.

It was so refreshing on this hot day and even Bob decided to take advantage of it. We returned to the trailer to make dinner and take our walk. Tomorrow the forecast is for scattered showers so we'll make plans around that. We've been lucky on this trip. We haven't been rained out from any of our plans and have had good weather wherever we've been.