This has been a great summer for Eurovan trips. With regular weekend wedding gigs on the Cape a thing of the past, we’ve had some time to explore some other parts of the Northeast. Between music camps over the summer of 2017 we’ve gone to Recompense Campground in Freeport, Maine, Long Island Bridge Campground in Moultonboro, New Hampshire and Mead Base Conservation Center in Center Sandwich, New Hampshire, among others. Between the last week at the New Hampshire Independent School of Music Summer Camp and the New England Adult Music Camp at Snow Pond in Sidney, Maine, we decided to revisit the Moosehead Lake region. We had tent camped there five or six years ago but had not had the chance to visit in the Eurovan.
We took off Thursday the 17th of August after Pam got out of work a little early. The trip up route 95 was uneventful and before we knew it we were back at Spring Creek Barbecue in Monson, Maine. We had stopped here on our last trip to Moosehead but since then they had expanded and moved down the road a bit. There’s outside seating now and all kinds of space inside. We just beat the dinner rush, ordered some food to go and a beer to drink while the food was prepared. The joint filled up quickly and most of the folks were locals. Lots of chatter between the gents at the bar and everyone in line. The food came quickly and we were on our way with a bag full of pork, beans and slaw.
We had decided to book a site for our first night at Lily Bay State Park so we knew we had a definite site and we wouldn’t be driving around on dirt roads looking for a spot in the dark. We got to Lily Bay around 6:30PM and there was a short line of folks checking in at the ranger station. No problem, no hurry, vacation. Well, the lady at the window decided to try and accommodate everyone in line at the same time, regardless of whether they had a reservation or not and she was in nooooooo huuuuuuury, if you know what I mean. Now, she was incredibly nice but, incredibly slow so I got a little antsy. Fortunately, she called in help. A couple dudes pulled up and proceeded to try and get another window open. Hmmm, seems that window hadn’t been open in a LOOOONG time. They finally got it open and one of the rangers starting helping out while the other took a load off and commenced to settin’ a spell.
We made it through the line eventually and then I went over to pick up the firewood we purchased. Turns out the dude who was cooling his heels in the ranger station was supposed to be getting firewood bundles ready for the incoming campers. He came over and offered his help. He cut a piece of string for the first bundle while I put another bundle together in the rack. As he tried to tie the bundle together, he realized the string was too short and said, “Well that was stupid! I cut the string too short!” This soon became the quote of the trip when i told Pam the story after I loaded the wood in the camper and we were on our way. The rangers were incredibly nice and helpful but we weren’t adjusted to “camping” time yet so we definitely had to get to our site and chillllll.
We pulled into the campsite on the Rowell’s Cove Road section of the campground. We had a huge site with a path deep into the woods going away from the rest of the campsites, nothing on one side of us, a campsite kind of close on the other side that was vacant and a couple campsites across the road with campers at them. We did the “level the camper” dance for a while and found a good spot with the sliding door to the fire and mostly level. Both of us were tired and a hungry so we cracked a couple beers and chowed down on the badass barbecue from Spring Creek.
After the pork frenzy, we took the bikes out for a spin to check out the campground. At the boat launch we saw a couple Vespa Scooters with the license plates; THING1 and THING2. There was an older couple fishing on the dock, a bunch of pickup trucks with boat trailers and not much else going on. We took a spin out towards the Dunn Point part of the campground but decided it was too dark and we didn’t want to get clocked so we headed back to our site. On the way back we took a ride past some of the waterfront tent sites. They look AWESOME and they were all full. Many of them had large groups. Back at our site we cranked up the fire and chilled until bedtime.