Category: Things To Do in Maine

Up to camp in Maine.

Sometimes said short hand “upta camp in Maine”. When you live in Maine, trips to camp happen regularly. And some that like to hunt, fish, snowmobile use their camp to get below radar. To unplug and recharge and catch their breath.

Big steak feeds, corn boils with other happy campers stopping by from along the miles of trails surrounding your camp. They have their own small shanties used for the same purpose.

Low cost vacation up in Maine.

A change of scenery. Your best thinking happens outdoors with an endless supply of fresh air, up close up to wildlife, less distractions. A break from multi tasking and to do lists. Take a break to rest up before going back into the rat race round and round.

Water front settings are the most rewarding taking a break from wall to wall people.

Maine’s unspoiled wilderness is the ideal backdrop that guarantees your peaceful setting. You are where white tail deer, moose, black bear, fox, game and song birds call their forest home.

The trails to explore are endless when you make the time for outdoor adventure. The further you go up into Maine and away from the tourist traps along the coastal regions, the less unspoiled your natural surroundings become.

But back to the “up to camp in Maine” theme this blog post is supposed to stay aware of today. The structure for the retreat varies greatly.

Sometimes built from scratch and piece meal by you or your granddad. A group of guys you work with out of state had a hand in the camp creation. Or a Maine home that has seen better days and gone unused, unheated. But is the end of the road quiet location, a few amenities camps lack that attracts you.

The camp usually home made, a passed down family property on owned or leased Maine land.

Maybe a hand hewn log affair? Built long ago and kinda musty smelling with it’s old familiar shut up odor. Shared with mice, other critters because you are like an absentee landlord.

Sometimes the place a tad messed up inside because you left quickly the last outing. To bee line back to wherever home is to stay ahead of a weather front or something came up at home needing your immediate attention.

For out of state visitors heading up to Maine to spend some time at the woods camp, that trip back to reality can be six, eight or more hours away.

When you rise and shine on a Sunday, the nagging thought about needing to get on the road to start the travel home is strong.  Unless you want to be dog tired from lack of sleep and all that white line driving fever.

The price you pay for playing hooky up at the simple Maine woods camp.

Where it’s not a second home to care for and keep ship shape. More of a relaxed, easy does it setting where the rules are different and everyone is relaxed, not too rushed.

The usual simple backwoods camp up in Maine heated only by a wood stove.

Put another log on the fire. Can be heat using an antique cook stove on one end of the small camp. Or a parlor heater parked in the center of the usually one room sportsmen’s paradise. Some bunks tucked away in the corners, maybe a screened in front porch for overflow guests when weather allows for extra sleeping space.

Some camps around ski areas where more elevation snow happens are A-frame design.

With a loft overlooking half the living area that is cathedral ceilings. Often an addition added to the camp done by folks with a real job not using the business end of a hammer. Crafting, piecing together materials that are odds and ends, recycled from home project renovations.

That camp front or side porch like an outdoor living room for talks, meals, reliving the day on the lake or out on the wood’s trails.

Planning for more of the same tomorrow when you are lucky enough to be up to camp in Maine. Or hang loose, stay sharp. The change of plans that is always tied to the weather forecast. Days inside at camp are slow and comfortable. But usually you are itching to get outside like a kid who wants to play outdoors.

It’s let’s go somewhere, do something outdoors is the standard operating procedure upta camp in Maine.

On foot, siting on a snow machine or ATV four wheeler. It is not uncommon for the owner or group of names on the real estate deed title have other Maine camps. One in TCR2 on the ITS snow sled trails, the one near Baxter for hiking. Even a fishing camp across the Canadian border into Quebec or New Brunswick for even more change of scenery recreation options.

Some “camps in Maine” are pretty ooh la la swanky.

Shock and awe. Nothing simple or one room about them when the home away from home becomes something way more substantial. Or a duplicate of the McMansion left behind. Make sure to take your shoes off, to use a coaster under that drink and all these bathrooms to clean with the tiny hard working bubbles .

What’s your definition of camping, a simple getaway up in Maine?

A gas light or solar powered Amish shed you slowly finish off the interior in knotty pine? Serviced with an outhouse privy behind it for nature calls? Yes, there is plenty of field and stream reading material. At this approach to camping, the HBO is out the front window or screened porch at a lake, river, stream or gazing at a mountain.

No 75″ flat screen TV to veg out on sprawled on a couch with one hand held high changing the hundreds of channels.

Up to camp in Maine where the running water is you with a bucket for a quick trip to the nearby spring.

Maybe if you are lucky, a hand pitcher pump that takes a couple up and down motions to start the siphon flow of water into the sink. Or are you thinking more along the lines of master suites with private baths and a compound fit for a President like Walker’s Point? Fully connected with waterworks, no secret service folks? Transmission lines with power, security cameras, back up generators, wall to wall Internet and 450 beamed in entertainment channels?

Maine has millions of acres to discover.

On the trails less traveled you carry a map. Often no cell phone signal because towers in township this, range that have no subscribers. A squirrel is not checking for friend requests or receiving lots of texts LOL. Camp is for cribbage and card games. I had an uncle who used a bus to be remote and able to change “wood’s camp” location.

Tying a weather balloon to anchor it on the bus’s front bumper to keep the hunting party together.

To avoid the call to the game warden because oh oh someone is lost. Don’t lose sight of that balloon over head fellas. Make your tramping circles small and always with that balloon visible to find your way back to camp.

There is a journal to scribble in something about the weather, who got the biggest, largest point buck.

The note book outlining the latest project crossed off and completed from the list under a magnet on the side of the gas powered refrigerator. Who came in the party this particular trip to camp is duly recorded.

Up at camp, there is no microwave hurried food preparations.

The old black frying pan passed down from your grandfather is on the stove. Fired up, hot and ready, greased for a hunger satisfying breakfast of eggs, ham, sausage, bacon, pancakes, hash browns and bean hole baked beans if you are lucky.

Up at camp in Maine you are very careful with outdoor fires.

Protecting the forest fire risk, respecting the wildlife that needs the timber stand for their home. You give the animals the space they need when up to camp in Maine. Checking on the camp, a familiar excuse to pack up and head into the woods to make sure everything is fine and dandy. Vertical poles put up inside the Maine camp for additional roof support are not uncommon.

The guise of worried about your hideaway in the Great North woods is a clever excuse to head “upta camp”.

Because it’s secondary gain, after you see all is a-okay then it’s well, once we are up here let’s go check on other sporting buddy camps as a courtesy. Depending on snow loads, shoveling off the camp roof may be a good precaution to avoid a cave in collapse.

Camp owners keep an eye on the winter weather snow accumulations predicted in local forecasts. Roof updates with metal helped save and protect many a private woods camp up in Maine. Plenty of Maine log makers offer camps of all sizes, prices and layouts. All numbered and constructed cheaply and easily to create your cheap vacation destination up in Maine.

Back country hiking from your simple Maine camp.

Lot of easy and more challenging hills too if woods trails are not enough cup of tea for exercise. Wetting your fishing line in the many lakes, rivers, ponds of Maine another past time option up at camp. Whatever you do outside your camp in Maine, make sure not to leave a trace.

The north Maine woods are not a souvenir stop and for leave what you find.

Admire, snap a photo, but leave it be. Some camps are handy to villages where you buy a meal or two, stock up on snacks, beverages and get to know the locals. Or you meet them on the trails, heading into town for building supplies. Many bumped into here and there on the trails. Everyone stops to shoot the breeze and share their love for the Maine woods.

Is upta camp in Maine just for old duffers reliving their past hunting trips, their time in the service overseas?

Or to drink barely pop circled sitting around outdoor camp fires? No no, your simple woods camp or cabin is for all ages.  Family members all take turns using the camp and attending the much anticipated larger gathering annual events. If your camp up in Maine is on a lake or pond, loons serenade you morning, noon and night.

Ducks paddle by panhandling for a piece of bread along the shore outside your camp.

Don’t forget your camera to capture what you experienced this time, other trips to your Maine camp create for eye candy. This trip just the two of you or the last one there were forty family members. Some sleeping in tents or travel campers pulled in and set up to head to for lights out shut eye. Because we’re getting up at dawn to tramp the words in search of game.

Camp in Maine is early morning coffee on the porch, out on the deck.

Feeling just like the World has stopped, like someone shut off a very loud engine. Tripped over the power cord to create heaven on Earth.

Your binoculars hanging by the dining room camp picture window.

just in case a lynx, coyote, bald eagle or some new species of wildlife shows up today. Capture a phone for the album of what wanders by that you have not spied before up at camp.Gazing out onto the lake at a pair of otters swimming together and who have a habit of showing off on the rock out front. The same one the grand children use before the float is taken out and anchored for use as a swimming platform.

There are sounds, but it’s the wind vibrating the pine needles or song birds happy to be alive just like you. Maybe the crack of swaying trees that have arthritis as they age. Even falling snow flakes and autumn leaves, the rain can be deafening when that’s all there is on the audio channel up your Maine real estate.

A wood pecker keeps perfect time with with an intensity like Bonzo beating the skins in Led Zeppelin.

There is where you do your best thinking reflection in the peace and quiet. At funerals, those who are brave enough to stand and offer a few words often mention how much the dearly departed loved being up at camp. The happy place, getting away from the day to day chasing the dollar to make ends meet as they grew old is often mentioned at Maine funerals.

Fishing poles up in the rafters stored for their next use.

For brook trout fly fishing using lures you hand tied yourself. Small mouth bass are calling your name out front the waterfront camp and time’s awastin’. Life jackets piled up in corner or draped over the corners of the home made bunk bed posts. A rifle over the mantel if there is a rocked attempt at a fireplace.

What the camp lacks for perfection it lays down all four acres face up for charm and memory making.

Many start small with just a couple of acres of Maine land to park the camper or RV on for one low cost vacation. To fashion an add lib camp involving the help of many.

A chain saw and gas can, 2 cycle oil and file in the tool shed at Maine camps.

Along with ice fishing traps, snow shovel and roof rake. A pair of snow shoes hanging on a wall spike. Cross country skis leaning into one corner and ready when you are to hit the white blanket of white power snow trails.

Lucky to have a shed at the camp. Maybe something big enough to house a four wheeler or snowmobile or two. An assortment of glass jars filled with odds and ends of nuts and bolts. An axe, hatchet, hammer and spade, farm wagon jack. Block and tackle, a chain or tow cope round out the wood’s camp DIY hardware store shed collection of survival tools.

Cast offs from home, the table at camp is a metal 1950’s Happy Days variety.

Rock solid but way way outdated. Or someone used a big wooden electric cable spool as the make shift table. With a rag tag assortment of no two chairs match around it grouped for meals and card games. Photos, some of them black and whites with grinning family members that have long since gone on to the great beyond. Holding strings of fish, or standing around a hanging deer that became tonight’s dinner of venison.

Nothing to do up at camp?

No, there is a collection of books, you work on projects, the new addition. Staying busy but a different kind of industrious than a typical day off back home in the real World. Fire wood is always needs to be cut, split, stacked. Blow downs happen on the jeep trail coming in and out of your hidden camp upta Maine.

Getting year round use, the wardrobe not the same at your woods cabin hideaway.

I know folks that have taken a 500 dollar old B&A railroad car without the wheels and made it into a woods camp. You stumble onto those when snow sledding or plying the trails hiking, biking, skiing or just traveling in and out of camp.

The grill is a 55 gallon drum cleaned up, cut in half with a hinge, grill added to create amazing charcoal outdoor dining fare. The trails where you see a Mother black bear or deer, moose with their young that you ease by and don’t harass.

Maine wildlife. You’re on their turf remember?

And there is no HOA, maybe an occasionally a visit from a Inland Fisheries and Wildlife game warden. He or she is a major resource on what’s happening around the thousands of wooded acres since you were last here.

Providing helpful suggestions on you folks ought to try this trail or avoid that one where there is a wood timbering operation underway.

The camp location can be only accessible by float plane or canoe.

Or park here and take a couple mile trail up a walking trail to arrive at camp on foot.  Not the best place to have a heart attack or suddenly need medical assistance. But if it is your time to expire, there is no better place to fade away then at your Happy Place.

Maine camp for rest and relaxation, for your mental health and to trap, shoot or catch what you put on your dinner table.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s a tradition and most in the family can’t wait for the next trip uptah camp.

Especially younger family members who get to come along on the next just the adults excursion.

Fun when it’s below zero or the red in the thermometer outside the kitchen window shows over 100 degrees.

The perfect back drop either extreme and in between. No electricity is fine or you fire up the Honda generator to charge up some deep cell marine batteries to run the water pump and a few lights.

Sights, sounds, smells, all the senses get a work out upta camp in Maine.

The camps, cabins, cottages are not just used for weekend stints. My cousin Randy and Barbara Mooers head to their camp up at St Croix Lake in unorganized Township 8, Range 4, WELS all summer long. So do Joe and Marguerite Lawlor now that they are retired. Those St Croix Lake camps are the perfect jump off point to take a jeep ride over to see the Ghost Trains in the Allagash Wilderness Waterday. To stop for a lunch in Oxbow or Masardis before making the big circle back to St Croix Lake camp like home.

Life is different, trapped in time, not the same each visit up to camp in Maine.

Am I preaching to the choir or do you think you need a little camp life? Too gamey for you? Grab the bar of Ivory soap and clean up, wash off in the lake or pond. Some of those Maine woods camps on leased land where you pay the personal property tax on the structure and a fee to use the spot.

That camp lease usually good for the next five years to stay the same lease amount.

Or consider buying a piece of land near that unorganized region of Maine. Like Mt Chase just outside Patten Maine that will get you so close to the north gate of Baxter State Park and the Monument and still own the land underneath your cabin “home sweet home”. Hope you enjoyed this Me in Maine blog post on life up to camp in Maine.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker 

207.532. 6573 |  info@mooersrealty.com  |

MOOERS REALTY 69 North ST Houlton ME 04730 USA