Spring weather in Maine, the early season signs are many.
Longer hours of sunlight and the big orange ball increasing it’s radation. Snow melting, your yard banks retreating to make driveways wider and parking easier. Waterways swelling as ice thickness thins to open up the lakes, rivers, ponds and streams for canoe races.
Ice Ice Baby. Maine Has Four Seasons. Yes, Winter Is One. Bit Nippy Today Would You Say? No Need For Sunscreen. But Spring Is In The Air.
Maple tree sap collection for the evaporators to remove the water to get to the syrup elixir you and I drizzle over the flap jack stacks. Thumbing through the garden seed catalog and dreaming about what to order, where it is going to go in the tilled patch of dirt behind your home. Spring skiing with less layers of clothing happens as spring gets closer. Potholes the size of vehicles that like frost heaves that jar your senses. No danger of falling asleep at the wheel as spring approaches in Maine.
When early spring weather is in the air.
The ribbon of roadways can become like one big rumble strip driving experience. It’s not your shock absorbers or springs or tires causing it. It is slow down, a different kind of driving experience. As in-melted ice layer elevations up and down and “pavement deficiencies” mix with lots of highway department sanding from past winter storm all combines. It creates nothing like a freshly paved perfectly smooth roadway to travel from point A to point B in this eight hour tall state of Maine. Those projects happen during summer road contraction public work projects.
Style, Comfort, Home Sweet Home Made To Last Design. Life The Way It Should Be Protected In Small Maine Towns.
Windows opened just a crack, then slid higher, cranked over wider. To exchange stale air out the innards of a Maine house. Birds return to crank up the volume of the cheerful singing as they forage for food. We miss the song birds that head south. Maine has over 400 varieties of birds that entertain us no matter what the setting in Vacationland.
Winter snow flakes create a dampen sound proofing too. That’s part of it. Your turn to deal in the cribbage board game in the ice shack go fish.
The still of winter is like what you hear as a kid inside a snow tunnel carved out in your backyard digging with neighborhood friends. Crawl in and listen. Hear it? Nothing. I know. Total silence. You hear zip nada zilch wearing your hand made mittens Grandmother pearl one knit two on to match the hat on the your head.
When you are holed up in a cave tunnel that can be widened to make it more like a room. But if you dig too far up or to the sides, you start to see daylight through the walls of snow that surround you. Sound volume picks up too as the layer removing sound is whittled away with your boots, a shovel, your mittens with all the ice shard chips dangling off them.
Voices are far away muffled or missing like insulation to blank out the outside noise. Wait. Was that Mom hollering time for supper? As the family dog visits like Lassie with gusto to lick, bark and signal yes it was. Your food is going to get cold so get inside, put your wet clothes on the drying rack by the wood cook stove and put your snow sled boots on the tray mat by the door. Not left splayed around the kitchen floor please and thank you.
Paddling For All You Are Worth, To Avoid A Dip In The Drink, Upended Mid River Or Stream. Spring Races Happen Because Of Winter Thaw Melting Run Off Making Waterways Lively.
Winter in Maine gives you a break from the pace of summer living. Slowing down from a busy fall harvest. Like turning off a noisy motor on a machine. The silence is golden. It hits you hard because such a contrast for the two ears on the sides of your head to process. You can think and gain perspective in the reflection of life in a Maine winter setting. The sound of a cracking woodstove fire or drip drip drip of a porch roof icicle splatter on a window sill. Solitude comes with a reduction of noise. But here it comes again. Spring in the Maine weather forecast. But not without a few blustery snow squalls to say don’t put away the shovel and bag of salt and sand for the walkway just yet Chummy, Mister Man.
The songs from Maine birds heard outside as we walk signal a spring season weather transition is in the making.
It happens slowly around you but here it comes right on schedule in Maine. You can lament the passing of winter because as you head up the swaying chairlift at a local ski area you realize something you enjoy is coming to an end. But opening up the moon roof hitting a drive through fast food takeout when you are getting on the I-95 highway to do a little traveling. When a early spring like day appears it turns the focus to get your head screwed on correctly. To adjust, like setting your clocks ahead to prepare for daylight saving time to match the season unfolding in Maine.
If The Boot Was From LL Bean, It Would Be Replaced Free. Not Be Leaking Right?
The animals sense it too. Cabin fever hits bad. You can smell it in the air. All the senses get tasered when fresh spring air enters your system. The black and white of winter weather starts to sprout buds and chutes of green and brown with the arrival of springtime.
All the seasons in Maine are special.
Each and everyone of us has our favorite pastimes and rituals that make us never want to leave the current Maine season and what the weather provides us for outdoor recreation. Squeezing out the goodness as we head outdoors for the fresh air, wildlife and to enjoy all this wide open space combined with the high test natural scenery happens all four seasons. Time waits for no one and we promise to do more of what we missed or just did not get enough of the next time this particular season rolls around on the calendar.
So much to like, so little time to sample it all, Maine is one natural outdoor buffet of experiences. Pick the reason, the season and get outdoors in Maine. It’s up to you. And it helps if you grew up a native that never knew living without the traditions that your family exposed you to as a young grasshopper.
What’s your favorite season in Maine? And have you been away too long? Isn’t it time to cross the bid green river bridge on the south end to the place where Maine is parked on the map? Maine is the way life should be. It is not just a story book affair but really exists. See what you are missing and explore her natural beauty. Discover her unspoiled rockbound coasts, lush forests, sandy beaches, rolling farm fields and friendly down to Earth people.
Living well on minimum wage. How does that statement strike you?
Not where you live, not anywhere you believe? Is the notion a stretch to imagine? And if you make a lot of money hand over fist now but still wonder where it all goes, are you really living well? What you make is not as important as how you spend and what your priorities are in life. Your shopping / spending habits can be masking the illness of unhappiness. The retail therapy is self medication that works for a spell when you swipe the magnetic strip on the plastic card. But is it the kind that lasts and is healthy? Not like the volunteering time and contribution to non profits that enrich a small Maine community.
Sugar Coated Maine, Don’t Miss A Season, Make Winter Sparkle Part Of Your Vacation Plans.
Maybe you were just not taught as a young grasshopper how to economize or live a notch or two below your means.
To save, to respect what you do purchase. To take very good care of it. Because it has value beyond what you sacrificed to toil and earn the money used to make the acquisition. There is a satisfaction from being ship shape financial and not way out on the bending limb.
Wasteful starts with not realizing the value of the dollar used to purchase whatever is purchased by you or others. Read more on the difference between frugal and cheap. Grateful for little things like a warm house, happy kids, two cats in the yard. The bounty of a garden, a good home cooked meal. A view out your porch window that makes your jaw drop and conversation to stop. As you reflect on how really lucky you are in Maine.
In business if you spend out more than you take in, you get to shut it down and no more enterprise happens. Hi ho hi ho, no more work to off you go. As mechanical or controlling as it can sound, life is like businesses. The business of economic survival but also joy, comfort, security of knowing you are not penniless or just not sure where your next meal is coming from or where you will sleep tonight. Self reliance and being in control of your own destiny not a burden on someone else is the goal. Not oppressed and wondering how did this happen to poor little ole me. Living well on minimum wage takes patience, practice, study of how others get more for less. And it is easier to pull off in a small rural state like Maine where less is more. And you hone your skills to have more than one discipline to pull your through.
The Amish Freeway, Heading To Church Several Times In One Day.
Lazy is not a disability and is a choice to avoid taking the steps to help pull yourself up out of the muck.
Don’t rock the boat and everyone lean going into the next curve. Easy does it, a day at a time and goals of not staying in the up against it because you learn how to best manage your resources of time, money, talents. You know how to weather storms outside your home and inside your life. Read more on trade outs, bartering in Maine. You need no money, you share a talent or an already owned asset that is worth what you want swapped in the exchange.
You have little money but are grateful and rich in spirit.
Happy with what you do have that is more than enough. Or is your attitude you will never have enough money and there will always be something you want that you can not afford. What motivates you? What is your definition of poverty or wealth? We are talking beyond money in a bank account or your stock securities portfolio. We are not referring to spending money to impress or for status. Your impulse control to spend or not to spend is like dieting or quitting smoking. It is a choice. The approach to your spending that defines all the financial transactions as something you really need or are they an item or service you just want with overwhelming desire.
The Sweet Stuff, Rock Maple Sap That Boils Down 40 To 1 For The Golden Mixture To Ooze On Your Maine Blueberry Pancakes. All Homemade And Better Than The IHOP Stack.
When you have the money to make the purchase today it removes the wishing and wanting galloping gimmees because you don’t.
Your impulse control to spend improves because you want the item or service but at the best price. That is just good business and whoever you buy from has to run their operation without slack or waste so they can remain competitive.
You can not just keep raising your prices to overcome poor resource management. You don’t have a monopoly. You are not a king or queen or dictator. Read more on duplication of services in small rural Maine towns. Otherwise it becomes a sinking ship, the population numbers bleed out and bye bye small Maine community.
School consolidations, greater group purchasing and regional economic development, police central dispatching, public town work crews sharing equipment between municipalities all has to happen. To avoid wasteful duplication of service spending. Like not now, but right now. By not waiting so it is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic waste of time when there is none left to shape the best decisions on the local level that everyone can live with in time as reality sets in during reflection. And survival mode kicks into full gear to look for any other slack that can be snip-snipped. Liked pruning a tree to protect its life and make it flourish in time.
Happy Coffee, Warm Up Your Hands, Heart, Let the Buzz Give You A Kick In The Pants.
Could you live well on minimum wage?
Already at a stage in your life where you have had all the toys and trickets? Not just beginning the journey of life after the parents ease you out of the nest. But do you remember the happiest days of your life were when you were starting out and had little but appreciate every new purchase whether ne or second time around used? Remember, over half of Maine is already in the UT, the unorganized territories where there is not much local identity and home town proud. The control is handed over to the state of Maine and one of the sixteen counties to run their show. Too many surrendering towns, plantations and settlements has Maine lawmakers concerned as deorganization steps are underway in the legislature.
Over 41 independent communities in Maine have shuttered, nailed up the town office windows and doors in the last 100 years. The rising cost of government mixed with the declining population is a deadly cocktail to swallow. Replacing shrinking woods and farm jobs with something to pay the bills is the other side of the coin. That just hammers home the point of how important it is to be thrifty from the grassroots up to the state and federal level. To turn around the loss of population every time the US Census people show up for a head count.
Could you live well on minimum wage?
Comfortable and enjoying life’s small simple pleasures. Removing debt and making it pretty much cash and carry only living for you, your family? Hunger improves the taste and you won’t stay that way when you become resourceful and adapt at stripping away the non-essential that can rob your life of the real things in life to pursue that surround us. You could make more money living outside of Maine but you are going to need it and then some to exist, just survive. Get more for less of what should be the most important when considering family values, being involved and needed in your small community and the reward of outdoor recreation in Maine. Ever dream about that?
Maine has affordable housing, low or no cost four season recreation, low crime, no traffic and simple approach to living. It is clean, not crowded and folks pitch in are define the community they call home no matter how big or small. Maine, is it what is missing. Is it time? Is it today to reduce it all down and build it back up with a healthier approach to living in Maine, the way life should be?
Unorganized townships in Maine. Over half the state is township this, range that and just not organized
Didn’t even get a name. With no school colors or mascot or basketball team to maybe get to go to the tournaments during Maine February vacation. The “town office” is in the Maine bureau of taxation’s unorganized townships division. Or in the unorganized division of the county government that the territory in question Maine land resides. The deed to the real estate title of all the acreage is recorded in one of the sixteen Maine counties.
Maine Fall Colors, See Them Shine Brightly Four Wheeling On An ATV Seat. More Scenery, No People, Lots Of Wildlife.
Like people you meet who have no middle name, the unorganized townships are like that.
Oh sure there are nicknames like TA R2 is affectionately called Letter “A”. Or Township 6 north of Weld in Franklin County Maine, and others have handles so every local knows where you are referring on the Maine map. When you break down on a snow sled or ATV four wheeler. Or describing the best place ever to hunt and fish or hike or tap into the wilderness lake where no camps hug the shoreline.
Very big in land mass area in this vast New England state but coupled with such a sparse population. Maine is extremes. The 39th largest state and the USA’s 9th least populated.
Elbow room, Maine sure does have plenty the further inland and north you go. Oh sure, Maine has 22 cities, a whopping 435 towns but the number of unorganized townships number 424 and another 33 entities are labeled plantations. Don’t forget 3 Indian reservations too. More on early Maine history. Life is definitely simpler living with low or no population areas. Where wildlife in the and out of the waterfront run the show unopposed.
But what about something else, a settlement in Maine?
What are those? Well the Plymouth Company of Popham Maine showed up in the same year as the famous Jamestown Virginia settlement. The year was 1607 but the Popham colony now present day Phippsburg in Sagadahoc County Maine on the Kennebec River settlement had a down hill slide because of a harsh winter. The new to this land landing party could not sustain. Petered out the following year. That put Jamestown in the history books as the first American permanent settlement. Along the Maine coast, other settlements sprung up in the 1620’s but not all lasted due to a the climate, the being on the look out for Indian attacks and just plain lack of provisions in the pantry. The early Maine settlers were used to easier living conditions and taking a step back in the Maine landing new life.
Several French explorers including Verrazano reached Maine in 1524. Champlain discovered and named Mount Desert, the largest island off the coast of Maine. The first English settlement of Popham Plantation was near the mouth of the Kennebec River.
Baxter State Park, Local Jewel Created By Governor Percival Baxter Back In The 1930’s! Maine, Over Half Of The State Is Unorganized Townships In The “UT”.
Massachusetts gobbled up most of the Maine land claims in what was a wilderness territory of the USA and by 1820 when Vacationland became a state, only about six settlements had survived.
1820 was the year the state of Maine pulled away from the Bay State. Even though despite a few New York Yankee fans among us, most are still in Red Sox Nation after the separation from Massachusetts. Early fishing settlements and tradings posts had their share of ups and downs in this New World. Not everyone was cut out for starting from scratch and totally new undeveloped surroundings.
The price of furs that soared high and low made trade with the native trappers feel cheated. The new settlement band of newcomers were used to open field line them up and mow them down warfare. They did not react well to hit and run raiding party spur of the moment attacks from the natives who knew the landscape so well. The locals always have a home court advantage. They had tamed daily conditions to make life in their area of Maine easier. For safety sake, it was mostly coastal fishing and river side settlements in Maine locations as a rule. And the existing native tribes headed inland. To blend in with the forest where they felt right at home trapping, farming, respecting the land and natural resources.
If you visit Maine you will learn of areas called settlements.
You could think they were a township, a plantation or just dubbed a little more interesting nick name for an unorganized township location. But low and behold you will find a place like Robinson Settlement in Aroostook County Maine that sounds like a municipality is really just an area of the township of Blaine(formerly Township Letter B, 1st Range; Alva Plantation). The name changed from Alva Plantation in honor of James G. Blaine, the current US House Of Representatives Speaker. Who never delivered on the promise of a town bell for a carrot if the locals did switch to his last name. Often a grist or lumber mill was the reason for the settlement name, like Whitlock Mills. Whitlock Mills near Calais in Washington County is the northern most lighthouse location in Maine.
Moose Not People, Other Wildlife Too Hide In The Woods, Waterways Of Maine.
Sometimes besides the name sticking for a settlement location in early Maine the locals knew from sight where you were from because of your clothing. It was not uncommon for the few families that carved out a new Maine farmstead in a new territory to buy their cloth material in bulk for the cost savings. For clothing production by hand from a large quantity bolt to save money. So when these settlement members did come to a population center to trade in commerce, to buy some feed, seed or pasture fencing, coffee, sugar, etc the color of their clothes defined where they were from out in the country.
In Hancock County Maine alone there are 1522 islands under the unorganized territories heading. In Maine’s unorganized territories, the UT, there are roughly 9000 year round residents. Lots of seasonal ones in the UT of Maine.
Rich Where It Counts, Maine Is Unspoiled, Drop Dead Gorgeous.
I listed a log home for sale with 25 acres of land in Hersey ME recently and that town’s six mile by six mile population is just 79 people. No, there won’t be a Walmart super center breaking ground or a set of golden arches rolling in to this very small Maine township anytime soon. Traffic lights, gangs fighting turf wars, drive by shootings or high crime or pollution just not happening in Hersey or other the very small Maine towns like it. Where there are not layers of players.
But look up, see the stars at night in one brilliant sky back drop. The woods infested with wildlife too. No people, no problems. Fresh air, clean water. Listen. Hear birds chirp, loons cry, woodpeckers knock or just the wind in the trees. The rain on the cabin roof. Not emergency response vehicles or heavy highway traffic or airplanes lifting off or landing. The other sounds of the city that never sleeps.
Peace and quiet happens in these small Maine town or plantation or unorganized settlement locations.
But employment to pay those property taxes, register the car and pump the fuel to make it move. That’s the catch. Maine is a great place to live if you can make a living. Or have a knack of removing money out of your approach to frugal living. Where bartering happens. It’s a long long ways to town pulled by the horse team or in the buggy or farm wagon.
Just water down that buttered rum laddled out to the men friends and male neighbors who are coming over this weekend to help you with the barn raising in Maine. They climb high and are cat like quickly putting the hand hewn 8×8’s mortised into place in the barn skeleton. The folks you work with the same you helped one by one with their community building projects on their homesteads weeks earlier and in future projects scheduled ahead.
Other small population centers are disbanding and electing to try to deorganize because there are just not enough folks to fill the elected offices to to keep the area running.
To keep it marked on the Maine map. In these small areas, the animal control officer for the dog chasing deer serves as a selectmen, on the district school board and mows the ground around the cemetery plots. His wife or her husband is on the planning board and heads up the recreation department and is serves a term on the board of property value assessing and zoning board. Oh and they serve on the local volunteer fire department, down at the local grange hall or snow sled club. They may be a licensed, registered Maine Guide and can help guide you in the hunting, fishing, maybe canoe or kayak or rafting trip.
Maine Is Real, Peaceful, Not Crowded. One Of The Lowest Crime States.
More than one hat is worn in the teeny weeny small Maine population centers that often were once large bustling lumber cutting forestry communities.
Or railroad communities, mill towns in an earlier time in Maine history. When they herded logs down the Maine rivers. Where the commerce was local before Interstate and Internet happened. Blacksmiths, local clothing stores, drug stores with ice cream soda fountains, phone company with party lines and Mabel helping make the call. Sometimes listening to the conversation.
Often if one more person dies and lets go of the local reins of control, that’s it. All she wrote. Deorganization or annexing, absorption in another municipality are the only options. To lower property taxes from over 30 mill to say 6 mill is another reason to wave the white flag in the legislature. That is fueling the dismantling of local government control at a increasing pace.
Looking for small itty bitty population centers but incredible large areas to roam?
You must be thinking about a place like Maine, the way life should be. Letting the state and the county government take over the municipality or plantation to absorb the tiny population. It is a last gasp surrender, is a last resort when the declining, aging population just continues to slide uncontrolled. We have room for you… all kinds in all four directions. Well maybe not so much to the east where our Canadian cousins hold down the Atlantic Provinces. Could you imagine living in an unorganized township in Maine? A recreational sporting camp or woodlot land owner is the biggest component of who does in Maine’s UT or unorganized townships.
Fresh dragged, groomed snow sled trails carved and made smooth during the middle of the Maine winter night
And this fine next morning you, your snowmobile party can’t wait to try them out to discover new places, old haunts in Maine. Just had a local home made breakfast with plenty of talk about today’s snow sled trip. Are you in this dream? There is nothing like the pleasure of trail riding in winter in Maine. Seeing wildlife in their natural habitat. Crossing a river by a new bridge built by hard working local snow sled club member volunteers this past summer. Using a trail system kept brush free and safely marked by snowmobile enthusiasts of all ages. Who pitch in to create interesting courses, loops, to groom their section of an ITS snow sled trail that passes through their part of Maine. The support also from local businesses, with a little help from the snow sled dealers, and the state of Maine. With permit money funneled back from a portion of the snowmobiled machine in state, out of state registration fees.
Follow Me To Maine. Explore ME Riding The Snowmobile Network Trails System Of Groomed Trails!
The biggest obstacle for the success of the winter snow sled season is the white stuff.
If it is scarce, the out of town snow sledders uses radar and the grapevine to find out where the flakes are piling up to play on this coming weekend. Some snow sledders do local loops and mostly to places to eat and socialize and then back to their Maine lodge log cabin or motel room. The local Maine snow sled clubs all take turns with their winter celebrations that are ideal to visit on a snowmobile. Ever been on a poker run to collect your hand at different snow sled stops? Ice fished in Maine using your snow sled to visit the shack over the five inch hole to wet the line?
Some hard core snow sledders with more time to logged behind the handlebars join Canadian snowmobile clubs.
To gain entry to the International trail system across the Canadian border. To head up to Labrador, Quebec, New Brunswick. But Maine has 14,000 miles of snow sled trails to entertain and keep it new and different. In a state nine hours long, you can spend a lifetime plying the trails, crossing the frozen lakes, hitting the kill switch to stop and gawk. To develop the million dollar stare from a mountain top or elevated ridge section of the snow sled trail.
By George We Have The Snow Your Machine Needs! Visit Aroostook County To Snow Sled This Winter!
Bring your go pro camera, pack a smart phone with decent video and picture taking. And use that cell to stay connected with the outside world when you enter the pure white landscape of Maine. Let’s check in to find out where’s the snow in Maine trail report latest news round up.
I have three snow sleds registered with new stickers in Maine this year.
We get over 100 inches of snow annually! There is plenty of snow and it is being shaped and groomed to create perfect conditions to make your trail ride memorable. Safety first and the trails are so so well marked with signage and mapped. To make it easy getting around. No one is going get lost. Come up up to Maine!
Tips for Maine Snow Sledders New To The Winter Sport.
Stay on the trail. Unless you want a good work out digging out of a hole that only gets deeper the more you squeeze the throttle.
Respect the Maine landowner’s property you are crossing on your snow sled. There are small trees in a plantation on one side, obstacles like parked farm equipment on the other that are trail hazards. You want to visit Maine and stay outdoors not hit the emergency room right? Don’t go home with a neck brace, a cask or worse in a casket. Stay on the right on trails and don’t shut down the machine on a blind curve. That’s a recipe for disaster and getting hit. Don’t over drive your lights at nights. You may have carbide steel ski runners, lots of titanium picks on your spinning track but high speed means longer distance needed on the trail to stop.
Remember These 8 or 10 horse power Ski Doo’s? Narrow to fit the trails that did not exist. Leaning into corners, bogie wheels and no frills snow sledding. Where you tinker for two hours to ride for one. Kids learned about mechanics.
Look for local newspaper advertisements about public suppers.
Study bulletin boards and social media portals from the snow sled clubs. These local feasts are low cost, home made by the best chefs in the land. Someone like your grandmother that cook you and I under the table.
Enjoy home style baked bean crock pots, the sliced just so coleslaw, potato salad, ham or turkey or roast beef, the corn bread, the pies. Well what we are trying to say is get one heck of a feed. While at the same time breaking the bread with the locals.
Learn more about the areas you are snow sledding in Maine from the folks who live here. Not just a brief conversation with a hotel front desk clerk, the gas station attendant or local waitress. Become part of the local fabric of Maine by eating with the locals at a public supper or weekend breakfast that’s raises money for the snow sled club to benefit the trails. Or that is a fund raiser for someone locally suffering with cancer treatments, battling recovery after losing everything in a house fire, some other personal disaster. Mainer’s help each other out.
Any season Vacationland is worth your time to visit.
But during winter especially the locals are even more friendly and extremely glad to see you. They open up to share their communities if you like to play in the snow flakes like we all do. Come meet the down to Earth people who will share with you where the best trail rides are. Custom made suggestions considering the age of your party and your particular interests. Maybe it is to see a Maine moose, other furry creatures who live in the woods, around the lake, rivers, streams. Or to park by a roaring water falls and learn about the local history of lumbering when they used the waterways to move the logs to the mill downstream. And steam engine Lombard forestry machines before the gas and diesel modern machines took over the woods operations with grapple hooks and skidders doing the tree yarding when someone hollered “TIMMmmmmber.”
We Should Take This Route Over By Bible Point When President Teddy Roosevelt Started His Vacation Day Hunting / Fishing In Maine. See? It’s Right (Squinting) There On The Trail Map.
Try new areas you have not visited before and experience more to add to the vacation collection. Visit up in the St John River Valley where there are two sets of trails, just like the North and South bound of the Intertstate 95! Make snowmobiling a healthy habit for your family and friends. When you need to take a much needed vacation during the winter months. Don’t just think of summer at the Maine coast only. Or a trip to hunt and fish or hike and bike in the fall only. Snow lubricates the machines and helps you glide up and over hill and dale. The white new fresh blanket makes Maine truly a winter wonderland. Everything is sugar coated and sparkling under the gaining strength sunshine of longer days. For those under the moonlight night sled trail rides.
Hasn’t it been too long since you spent time in Maine? Hold everything. Plan the trip, make the call, google Maine snow sledding options because the coast is clear. We have plenty of snow to open up all parts of Maine to you and your party on the fun to ride machines.
Rent Snow Sleds From Northern Outdoors! But You’ll Want To Buy Your Own After Catching The Snow Sledding Fever.
Low cost, high scenery, fresh air, sunshine, wide groomed safe marked trails and all kinds of local cuisine. That’s what waiting for you now in Maine!
Break up your winter running the channel changer and snacking too much. Get off that couch. Shake it up. If you do snow sled in Maine it is preaching to the choir. But if it is something new you have not considered, catch the sled head bug. Once you do, the entire family will be right with you on the snow sled trails in Maine. Here are some images of Maine snowmobiling to motivate you to get that winter clothing just hanging in the closet assembled for your next trip north. Catch the fever for new snow. It’s in the air in Maine.
There is no reason to be chilly and the new snow machines have thumb warmers, heated handlebars, radiation under your feet. Strap on your snowmobile helmet, pull on the snow sled moon boots, zip up your action hero looking suit. It’s time to turn the key or pull the cord to begin your snowmobile adventure in the vast state of Maine. Bring your own machines or rent them in Maine. Hear from those who use the snowmobile trails! Tap the video for Maine snowmobile riding. Maine winter snow sled riding, take a trip where cars, truck and man don’t go much or at all.
Heading North to Maine. Heading into the North Maine woods
What is the magic of just the location, that one word North? Heading into the North Maine woods. Pointing whatever you drive or piling in with a group of friends to head North to ski, snow sled, hunt, fish or get out on the water.
North Sign, What’s The Buzz, The Big Deal About Up North?
On a compass or a map, the first thing the user wants to determine is where is North. Because the needle better seek north. Not have a mind of its own. And after rolling out the tightly curled up map, you look first and foremost for the arrow pointing in the direction of North. The orientation of North trumps all the west. You have to know where is North first to get your bearings and avoid vertigo.
The North star, Polaris used for navigation unless pesky cloud cover messes up the exercise to know if you are still heading in the right direction.
Up North in Maine. Each quadrant of the circle conjures up an image or two of the other regions. Causes the dream maker insider all of us to consider what if we headed in that particular direction armed with knowledge from the grapevine. Just hearing, seeing, thinking about one word from books, the boob tube or conversations.
West, heading out west.
Panning for gold. Laying claim to free land, a new start for your family in the wagon train. Or smelling like soot. Riding the iron rails in the steel horse gnawing on beef jerky. New unspoiled fertile land, heavily wooded with incredible scenery out West awaits you. All aboard.
Someone in your family’s past headed West to make their fame and fortune right? Hoping they were not a gun slinger or horse thief. Cowboys, rodeos, branding irons, lasso roping scared little Hereford calves. Waving a branding iron for the circle K tattoo. Surf boards, 409’s, Rodeo Drive, Route 66, Area 51 are what you find out West. Hope we don’t have one big final Earthquake.
Pass me that harmonica Cookie. We get to the Rockies by night fall tomorrow if the bag balm works like a charm on lame old on Lightning here. I got a dose of the joint paint myself. Hand me that little green square tin will you? (Rattlesnake sound, hungry wolf howling, cactus shadows around campfire perimeter). Another splash of coffee or a long haul on the flask filled with the recipe?
South, down south.
You might picture mint juleps, Southern hospitality, cotton and tobacco and moonshine. Gray colored material pitted against dark blue. Sitting a spell on a huge mansion porch held up by large pillar columns. Pleasant weather in the sunny South where snow shovels are not needed. Kentucky blue grass music fills the air. Is that a banjo in the mix?
Chasing white golf balls, fishing for red snapper, liberally applying sun screen on your kids at the sandy seashore. Visiting glove wearing cartoon characters at the Magic Kingdom. Pour me another tall glass of the orange juice Anita Bryant. Leave in lots of the pulp and make it country style. Boll weevil and termites and Tennessee walkers. We’re down south.
East, Far east.
Sounds exotic, I can hear zitars and harp strings and pan flutes. Where we have a serious shortage of four legged chairs. Lots of pillows though all over the flooring. You might think about spices, smooth shiny silk, the fragrance pretty blue lotus flower and sitting cross legged clearing your mind. (Snap) Need another pair of chop sticks to chase your rice cakes and raw fish around the plate? Those waxed paper thin sliding house doors would not stand up to a gale force Maine wind.
North. Due North.
Unfortunately for some, the first thought that pops in your head is snow. Lots of white stuff. Maybe reindeer that go air born. The cheerful short round guy dressed in red velvet / white fur trimming. Ho ho ho Santa, Mrs. Claus and their low to the ground gang with the pointed ears. Dog sleds and float planes for transport and igloos for housing. Polar bears of white riding on ice floes.
Heading North, Hitting The ITS Trails In Maine.
Maine is parked up North.
But you can go way way further climbing up the lines of latitude on the spinning globe. Extreme north can be the vision of Maine for those who have never set foot in the Vacationland state. Maine shares borders with Canadian provinces which causes a cultural exchange missing at the North Pole. There are no polar bears in Maine.
When you live in Maine, West becomes Jackman, Sugarloaf Or Sunday River. Your South orientation becomes the Wells, York Beaches, the Old Port, Kittery Trading post.
Your Downeast Maine a winding trip up US Route One to get your fill of lobsters, steamers filled with clams and fresh native corn on the cob. Look, was that a distant lighthouse, hump back whale or eagle spotted off the bow of the schooner?
I live in Northern Maine.
Snow Is Not An Evil Four Letter Word. Not In Maine.
But where I blog from you can travel two hours north and still be in Maine. Up in the St John River Valley in the Crown of Maine. Aroostook County is the largest of Maine’s sixteen. Aroostook the garden of Maine known for its potato fields. The heavily wooded forest land, the clean lakes and rivers. The fresh air and winter is just one of the four months. And there is lots to be said about your wood burning stove, the charm of winter living in Maine.
What is your image of Maine? Hopeful more than winter snow flakes, icicles and hand knit mittens and hat. Sample ME for yourself. You fill up your mental slate with experiences in Maine. Any chance you can get, sneak or steal away to Maine. Easy to find and always due north from most places. Define Maine in your own words and from personal experiences you collect and cherish any of the four seasons.
The Norwegian Designed Cast Iron 118 Model Wood Stove Has Old Country Designs But Burns With Modern Techniques To Maximize Your Fire Power.
There are so many reasons to heat your Maine home with a wood burning stove.
Often what drives a home owner to feed a wood burning heater stove or furnace is the spike in the cost of other fuel options. When heating oil, natural gas or electricity bills soar higher, the natural fall back routine is to fire up the wood or coal burning stove.
Today it is smart to have more than one heat source combination so you can adjust to seasonal fluctuations. To play the energy market if you have more than one fuel system to maneuver. Let’s face it, if the talking head news reporter signals a shortage of oil or natural gas production, brace yourself. For the here it comes. Suddenly blip. It is a helpless feeling. When the beep beep beep Maine winter heating routine fuel delivery truck is backing into the driveway too often to hook up the expensive hose.
Next Year’s Wood Pile In Tree Life Form. Ready To Knit On, To Slowly Cut And Split Into Just The Right Stove Lengths. Mainers Stay A Season Ahead With Their Wood Stash.
So burning wood, heating your home with rock maple, beech, white and yellow birch, ash, oak and other hardwoods.
Maine is ninety one percent wooded and with all those vast timber resources increasing in cordage yearly right out your back door, why not? And not just to save money. Wood burning provides lots of other perks besides the warm your bones. You cut up a few blow down tree limbs off your back yard. Or venture into the wooded sections of your land acreage to hook on and haul out to a yard whatever did not make it through the last winter ice storm. Slice and dice to fit your wood stove heater box and often the big limbs don’t require a split down the middle to crack them open faced.
Your Maine house yard is cleaned up in the spring and the stacks of wood created are part of your fuel stored for the following winter. Or to use to take the chill off a Maine home in late spring, early fall. Before the wood heater stove is put into round the clock action. Some folks burn wood only when they are home and awake. Others build a smug to heat the house floors with a small cellar wood heater when the temperature sinks low in the glass tube. To supplement whatever the kitchen wood cook stove does not do to increase the warmth in that very important space in a family home.
Heating a space in a Maine home using a wood heater, but not keeping the entire house to the same temperature is economical.
Does to mean you are going to be wearing your snow suit inside or that you can see your breath. Or won’t be able to have house plants. Just things are going to be a little lower temperature than seventy degrees in the second floor bedrooms or down in the formal parlor used on special occasion. Like funerals at home in the original days when the Maine home was young. Or when gentlemen callers came to call.
More Modern Woodheater Stoves Used In Norway! The US Jotul Stove Buyers Like The Boxy, Square Stoves With Norwegian Animals And Winter Scenes, Lettering.
Wood furnaces keep the wood chucks in the cellar where they are stacked and racked to prepare for the seasons of snow flakes and thick sheets of ice. The central wood furnace can be hot air or hot water and tied in to work in tandem with the oil or gas unit. Making sure the chimney is lined, solid and not tapped with lots of “appliances” That are vented into the same heating stack which is a no no.
The clean burning wood pellet stoves that use the pallets of forty pound sacks that a fork cliff delivers in ton increments like the kerosene K-1 monitor type heaters are direct vented out the home’s exterior sidewalls. Woodstoves need more than just cleaning the chimney, emptying the ash pan and using fire wood that is not twenty minutes old green green green. Which is the kind full of creosote and that causes the house fires that roar loudly up the burnout in the stove flu. Cementing in fire brick, replaced a handle that breaks, and always studying for any cracks or danger that lack of repair can cause with any wood stove or furnace heater.
Nothing wastes wood for heating more than a Franklin wood stove or a fuel hog fireplace.
The hypnotic smell of a wood fire outside as you head indoors. Combined with the sound of your boot crunching, compacting the new soft snow underfoot. Sometimes it is the dancing, crackling wood fire romance you want and not to squeeze every renewal heat source BTU out of your Maine log timber tid bit. Especially at a seasonal lake camp after ice fishing or ski chalet when the boards are removed that you used to carve the groomed down hill gravity ride. Or cross country slide and glide to end up relaxing in your front den. The fireplaces that have a woodstove insert that are air tight or the stone / brick chimneys that have blowers and heatalator grates can pull their weight lots more efficiently. Helping heat the inside of a Maine home to keep it warm as toast. To greet you when you decide to come in from all that fresh air, the beauty of new fallen white snow that transforms your location.
I am very partial to Jotul wood stoves because my Dad was a dealer who believed in these Norwegian tried and tested gems.
Jotul North America employs about seventy five people and produces roughly seventeen thousand woodstoves, wood and gas fireplace inserts. About nine thousand stoves are imported from the mother company in Fredrikstad, Norway. Jotul is a major player in the cast iron woodstove parts market. The Norway main operation has been producing wood, coal, gas heater stoves since 1853. Jotul Gorham Maine’s operation started in 1980. The same year my Dad linked up as a wood, coal, fireplace insert distributor to sell the stoves put together from the parts floated over from across the pond.
The small but mighty Jotul 404 wood cook stove does an amazing job as a cast iron heat producer. But the smaller fire box means foot long wood to whittle down to from a cellar feeding a wood furnace using sixteen and longer lengths. And little box means more trips to stoke the flame, tend the fire. That goes out shortly after the led lights do in the old farmstead located west of town in Houlton Maine.
Old Maine Farmsteads Create Fresh Veggies, Fruits, Produce. Nothing Sweeter, Healthier Than Close To Home Food. The Homesteads Heated, “Fueled” With Wood From Your Own Forest Land Too.
What are we toying with buyer for a Jotul woodstove and why not consider any other brand, or a sleek sexy soap stone model that is out there to tempt us? Because my family’s exposure to Jotul woodstove has been an over the top positive one. My oldest brother heated his Bangor Maine home for years and years with a Jotul #4 unit.
This model wood heating stove has a front door that can open up, push down and slide under so a fireplace screen can be added for open blaze effect. Another older brother swears by his years using a 602 and 118 Jotul model outlined in the same previous model link you just passed in the read read read. Slow burning like a cigar to make the fuel burn clean, even, and more completely. Not headed up the chimney in wasted heat that does not benefit the inside of a Maine home sweet home atmosphere.
My Dad sold a slew of Jotul stoves using all fuel sources and fireplace inserts too!
The farm neighborhood neighbors that had the amazing 602 heater kept them. They did not leave them in a house when they moved. You get attached to your Jotul woodstove because you know as the slogan goes “Jotul woodheaters have been fighting the Norwegian winter cold for 160 years”. Wood is a little more precious in Norway where wars, too many centuries of burning wood and more people all tapped the tree woodlot hard. That’s why these cast iron wood heater stoves are so so energy efficient. The tall coal stove Jotuls were not as popular but folks who bought them still use them which speaks volumes. Made to last and too heavy to move when you consider cast iron that needs three men and a small boy to wheel in and out of the Maine home.
Heating with wood gives you a good stewardship feeling deep down inside.
When you have your winter wood all cut, split and ready for the next heating season, it means you are prepared. No worries. And if the power which is rare to lose goes off, no one misses a beat with the wood fire routine. You really feel self sufficient like a homesteader living off grid in Maine.
This Spot For Vacations Is Not A Place To Open Up A Wood Heater Stove Store. But Air Conditioning, Something With A Lime, Siestas Help Handle A Different Kind Of Heat Inside / Outside Your Grass Thatched Roof Hut.
There is an independence when no matter what foreign oil prices shock and awe to new for new price levels, you keep chugging along with your wood heat routine in your Maine home. These Jotul woodstoves are a timeless Norwegian craft. And I bet, chances are you will if you have not yet heard of them first hand in your lifetime. Like rooting for the Red Sox, Patriots, Boston Bruins sports teams, you no doubt feel strongly about your brand of wood stove that keeps your toes from freezing. That heats your home and warms your soul.
Vermont Casting models of all kinds fill the properties that get listed for sale in my area. The Intrepid, Resolute, Defiant models in all colors of enamels. Neat names too for fighting the winter cold. Other woodstoves out there too! Lots of home made ones welded from steel, fashioned from shop trailer truck tire rims, fuel tanks and 55 gallon barrel stove wood heaters. Plus the dependable Ashley or Suburban models square models that are not fancy but work like a charm.
And don’t forget the old Home Comfort, Clarion, Glenwood, Atlantic and other smasher wood cook stoves too heavy to take apart and lug off still stand guard in many Maine country farmsteads and in-town Victorian house kitchen parlors. Some are rough and you find them in Uncle Henry’s, on Craig’s List in searching for Maine treasures in the buy, sell, swap guides. Others have been re-nickeled and have all their parts, are working stoves not just conversation pieces.
Your appreciation for how well your wood stove heater works increases.
You fall in love. Get more attached to the wood heaters you stoke and stroke. That you spend lots of alone time with over the peaceful, lazy winter months. Or those wood cook stoves, outdoor wood boilers that take monster sized tree pieces that you use more often than just the snow calendar months. The former for serving up your Saturday night brown bread, soldier or yellow eye or Jacob’s cattle baked beans in the oven section. While topside another cooking show is playing. Grilling the neat rows of red snapper hot dogs on stove top mingling with the sliced onions like “upta Maine camp ayuh” Chummy.
The really old woodstove parked and forgotten much of the year in the dark of the log cabin retreat in T this R unorganixed township. That’s used for R and R, for hunting, fishing, reading, sleeping and snow sledding or four wheel ATV trail fun. With the woodstove almost driving your out as you play fifteen two, four, six and one point for last card high spirited cribbage matches. Chasing up and down the rows with your wooded match stick marker replacement because the one that came with the board turned up missing. And whoever made the board is gone. Pegs by Porter. RIP Paul Porter a local accomplice to Torrey Sylvester a retired attorney who has made many an exotic wood cribbage board for camp fun.
F-45 Jotul Greenville Wood Heater. Simple, Powerful, Made To Last Norwegian Woodheater.
Heating with wood is an old time tradition in rural Maine because it saves money, heats more completely and gives you healthy exercise year round.
Nothing is wasted when the limbs and blow down trees are cleaned up so it is a win win scenario. Maine is a state not flush with cash, without money to burn so anything along the lines of practical, frugal, we’re all over that. The study and slow impulse control to do your home work is part of the thrifty living.
Like anything, is this model the best value, is this size the closest fit to what is needed based on the specifications of your home for safety clearances to keep the fire marshal and insurance adjuster away from your doorstep.
And that won’t be too much or too little to do the job of heating your Maine home for the maximum comfort for your family. To hang yours mittens next to, to position the wooden rack to dry other clothes a little snow covered from playing or working outside in Vacationland. Every household in Maine’s dry fluffy snow winter climate could use a little moisture inside generated from the drying clothes. And with a wood heater stove, there is always a kettle of hot water for a spot of tea, to make your fresh press hand ground coffee.
The Jotul F-45 Greenville model is a sweet stove that could be a good candidate for replacing the old trooper Jotul 404. Will never sell or get rid of the black beauty smaller cook stove. But the Jotul F-45 is a wood stove under consideration. There is a $300 Energy Of Maine tax credit rebate too which improves the taste for burning with wood to heat your home.
