~ Jon James
Millinocket and the Katahdin region is my favorite part of the world. The people, the landscape, the pace of life. I prefer it to he hubbub of more urban areas.
If you’re anything like me and like to travel to the area to hunt, fish, camp or just drive the Golden Road, there are some warnings that people who have never done it need to hear.
Here are a few:
1- Have a recent Maine Gazetteer. This is your Maine woods roads Bible. Your GPS will be of no use.
2- Keep a couple of spare tires if you plan to go deep into the North Maine Woods as there are few garages that exist there anymore since the mills closed. Even then, they were few and far between and were used, mostly, to fix logging trucks. Ask me how I learned this.
3- Keep your speed down under 40 mph. This is a pro-tip which many people who venture out don’t understand…many of them college age kids who have no clue that these roads are full of shale stones which can be very sharp and when spinning tires turn them up, they will slice through the rubber…again, ask me how I learned. When the road is freshly graded (which is more and more rare on the Golden Road) the temptation to drive faster is there. This is NOT a good idea. Two flats at once is not uncommon. I learned the hard way on a trip back from Churchill Dam coming down the Telos Road.
So there are a few warnings…I could go on. This is not a place you want to get caught off guard. As beautiful as it is and as much as I love to travel it, there are many things that can happen and the closest hospital might be down a hundred miles of dirt roads.
So here’s my story.
My sister Bonnie and I recently went up for a couple of days. She wanted to see this place I had talked about for the last forty or so years. She loved it and really enjoyed traveling roads with unknown destinations.
I never saw a woods road I didn’t like and take them regularly. Most of them just end. No signs. No warnings. They just stop.
My wife doesn’t enjoy these trips because she’s nervous when I take unknown paths. I get that. I also get that my sister has the same adventurous spirit as I do, trusting me to get us back to town safely. I did this past weekend…pretty much.
We drove over to Ripogenus Dam as she had never seen it. We saw the impressive and poweful flow of water coming through one of the gates and I showed her the trailhead to the path which goes to McKay Power Station below the dam.
** If you take this trail, know that it comes out on the opposite side of the powerstation at the start of the gorge (which you can see at the end of the video below. You can also see the water coming through the dam although my fat finger covered part of the cell phone lens as I shot it). Also, on the power station side, is where the Penobscot whitewater rafting trips begin. The Cribworks (a class five rapid) can be viewed at the beginning of the Telos Road (off the Golden Road).
After she looked at the plaque memorializing two divers who lost their lives at the dam many years ago, we began to drive away when I heard an odd sound from my truck.
“Uh-oh,” I said. “Do you hear that?” I asked.
She didn’t…but when I had here get out to give a listen, she did hear it and said it was coming from the back passanger side.
When I got out and looked, I found that the tail pipe was just kind of floating around back there. A hanger had broken and so it was swinging freely and vibrating against the frame making all sorts of racket that got louder as we went on…very slowly, as I didn’t want to drop the whole muffler system.
Long story short, we got back to town safely, no worse for the worry.
The first place we stopped was the hardware store near downtown Milly (my name for Millinocket). Closed. After all, it was Sunday.
The next place was Katahdin General Store which is a great “everything” type of place. I have to mention, they have great pizza which we had delivered to us at The Blue Ox Saloon, which you can read about here.
They young man and woman inside went way out of their way to help us find some wire to hold the tailpipe up but didn’t have anything that would do the trick but they DID have the biggest zip tie I ever saw! Thay gave it to us along with scissors to cut off the excess.
I got down on my (still sore from surgery) back and tied the tail pipe up to a leaf spring. Presto! No more loud vibrating muffler. This is a great example of why I love these places. People are the nicest you may ever meet.
As we drove away, thankful, I told Bonnie, “I wanna check this to make sure the tailpipe doesn’t get too warm.”
See, I’m not as dumb as I look. I know that plastic is not a friend of high heat but, frankly, I have never gone and grabbed the tailpipe after a trip to see how hot it got. That was never on my bucket list. However, because we had a plastic zip tie holding up part of the exhaust of a hot engine, I put two and two together and thought, “this might not be a good long-term fix.’
So we drove around to heat the engine up. We went past the Millinocket “jetport.” That’s a name I’ve given the single runway airport. We drove for a good fifteen minutes before I pulled over and went back to feel the pipe. It was quite warm.
I told my sister we needed a longer lasting fix…still grateful for those wonderful people at Katahdin General for their help.
In the local Plaza, which use to contain Ames, Mr. Paperback, the Pangburn Family IGA, Katahdin House of Pizza and more, there is now only one store. Thankfully, it’s the only one we needed: Tractor Supply.
We needed some wire and they had it…plenty of it. Kris was the man of the hour, showing us the different types and guages that they carry.
I bought a 100 foot pack (knowing I’d only need a couple of feet) but I wanted the piece of mind that the fix would hold until we got home where I could do a proper fix.
Being kind of dumb, I didn’t think about how this stranded wire couldn’t be twisted to hold nor could it be tied. We went outside and tried to no avail before I had to go back inside looking for more hardware.
I knew the wire had to be secured with a kind of wire clamp, which Kris found for us. Back out we went with the clamp. Of course, I didn’t have a wrench that would fit the tiny nuts, so back inside for a third of fourth time we went. By now, I was sure Kris must be getting sick of seeing my face but if he was he didn’t show it.
Next time we went out, he came out with us carrying an impressive pack of tools which were, not surprisingly, from Tractor Supply.
I crawled under the truck with the wire and clamp and Kris handed me a ratchet and various sockets so I could complete the job.
Have I mentioned how nice Kris was and how nice people in general are it the Katahdin region?
Again, I was grateful and cannot say enough about the help we got. Best of all, it was an adventure for my sister and me. A trip we will always remember and people we will never forget.
Below is a video of Kris helping us out followed by quick videos of Ripogenus Dam and Ripogenus Gorge. Sorry about my fat finger and the obstructed view of the dam. 
Latest Local Central, Eastern & Western Maine News
The post Another Story From a Trip North That Comes With Warnings and Much Gratitude [VIDEO] appeared first on True Country 93.5.
