Two days exploring Maine's northern-central Kennebec Valley region with a rollicking whitewater day paddling the Dead River, and a night canoeing into Lobster Lake off the West Branch Penobscot.
See the full feature at http://www.canoekayak.com
candk.me/Maine_ep2
See the full feature at http://www.canoekayak.com
candk.me/Maine_ep2
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00It's been a great opportunity, particularly to get people in a place that really is two
00:13hours, two and a half hours from Portland, our major population center, and even four
00:19hours from Boston, to have a weekend, completely just escape, because as you've realized, no
00:27cell phones, you're really kind of off the grid completely, and just get out on the water
00:33and enjoy it.
00:38The biggest thing about paddling this river, specifically, it doesn't necessarily run through
00:43a gorge like the Kennebec, but you really feel like you are out absolutely in the middle
00:49of nowhere.
00:50You won't see necessarily, it doesn't get jammed up with a lot of people, so you really
00:54kind of have the river to yourselves.
01:05I love being out in the woods in general, but I do love being on the water, and there's
01:09this sort of, especially in a canoe, there's this common purpose with you and the other
01:14person in the boat with you, and you're working together to navigate whatever space you're
01:23moving through.
01:25I also love the sense that you're kind of inexorably moving downstream, I think that's
01:31why I love rivers.
01:32I love the, like, starting at the put-in, and just kind of following it to its natural
01:38conclusion at the end, and, you know, it's hard to get lost on a river trip.
01:45You might not know where on the river you are, but you know where you're supposed to
01:49go, you've got to go downstream.
01:50You know, on the Dead, you couldn't stop paying attention, the second you stopped paying attention,
02:02you're almost with broadside on a rock, or, you know, almost in a hole sideways or something,
02:09and I love that, because it really calls you to be super present, there's no way you could
02:15stop and check your phone.
02:21And then all of a sudden, you kind of get to the take-out, and it's just, that's camp.
02:31There we were, and we had our little cabin tents, and got to settle in, and go up and
02:38have dinner at the brewery.
02:39We've got half a mile of campgrounds, we have 28 freestanding cabins, restaurants that's
02:45open for three meals a day, you can come back into a part of civilization, it's all in a
02:51log cabin, beautiful building, it's fun.
02:54Felt very European.