North American Tag-O-Rama!

[akarob]

You have to ride to understandd

Good grab

[Patrick46]

Hahaha......I knew my last post would shake sumthing loose!!!



Way-ta-go Squidman!!!!

[AndyCap]

Well played. I think the rain is just part of it now. I have never carried the egg on my bike when it was not raining.

[M I K]

[akarob]

Bonus points for a tiki in the picture. Nice.

[haystack]

Is this the new tag ?

Originally Posted by M I K

There is no bike in the picture!?!

[Emoto]

Originally Posted by haystack

Is this the new tag ?


There is no bike in the picture!?!

I don't think so. Just a shot from along the way.

[Dave]

[Squidmark]

Mr. Egg and I went in search of this up in western Maine:



You can go there too!

According to this web site, it's the largest hydro station in Maine. The dam and associated dikes block the Kennebec River and form (or seriously enlarge) the very long Indian Pond at its southwestern end. The river downstream from the pond is renowned for being prime rafting country.

(I spent the weekend with 30 or so of my closest friends at a warm dry ski house in Glen, NH rather than down the road with the WHACO crowd in the cold and rain (hi, guys!). M I K's photo earlier in this thread is from that. I went up to Maine Sunday.)

Head up US 201 to The Forks, Maine, turn right onto Lake Moxie Road and follow the signs for 12 miles or so to Indian Pond. The road between 201 and Lake Moxie is paved; the road between there and Indian Pond is dirt, but wide and smoother than most New England paved roads:



Watch out for moose! I saw three on this trip. One came running out of a side road directly at me, blowing right through the stop sign and without signaling! Fortunately, he made the turn without hitting me.

At the very end of the road, there's a stop sign, an open gate, and a check-in station. Wave at the nice lady (if she's there), or go into the office and tell her you'd like to check out the campground, or go in and actually register to stay there - it's a nice place (quiet, large sites isolated from each other, right next to the pond, loons crying in the evening, etc.)

Beyond the gate, turn right toward the campground, ride along the dike holding back that part of Indian Pond,



past the boat launch and picnic areas and into the campground, which is between the tall poles on the right in the photo below:



Find site 12, deep in the back:



And here's your tag shot:



Note that tree with the "Site 12" sign on it:



Look behind it at its base. Egg and accompaniments (including a nice addition from me, if I do say so myself) are nestled in a hollow there, in a plastic bag (his canvas bag was getting a bit mildew-y smelling), looking like this:



except that it's covered over with leaves and pine needles.

If the site is occupied, apologize for the intrusion, grab the packet and go. Feel free to use the boat launch / picnic area to stage your tag shot instead of the campsite. I was the only person in the entire campground the nights I stayed there and apparently, the first visitor of 2011 according to the register.

I had hoped to place the tag right at the dam, but there's a closed gate (since 9/11, doncha know) going down to it and it's not even visible from that gate, so I had to park Egg in a more prosaic spot. (And BTW, finding a spot that was easy to locate and describe but unlikely to be found inadvertently was actually hard!)

Go get him!

I'll post something about the trip and stuff to see in the area soon.

[42]

[Volta]

Originally Posted by Squidmark

Mr. Egg and I went in search of this up in western Maine:

Nice! Maybe I can squeeze a quick weekend trip north in before my long ride south...

[Wreckchecker]

Nice job Squidmark!

[SheRidesABeemer]

I see an opportunity to get the tag to Cape Bretton Island...

[Squidmark]

From the campground, walk down to the closed gate that leads to the dam and powerhouse, but turn left between two brown posts just before that, walk through the raft storage area and stop at the top of the stairs.

The dam:




Note the four penstocks, two fifteen-foot-diameter ones, one ten-foot, and one four-foot. The four-foot is what gets used at minimum flow to drive a smallish turbine. I suspect it is part of the "dark start" portion of the power plant, since the gates for it might be small enough to be opened and closed manually. You can see the spillway gates and the top of the powerhouse and across the way, the start of the log chute (see below).

You can go down a long flight of steps (159 by my count) to the river's edge where they launch the rafts. The staircase:



has rails. The rafts slide down those while the rafters walk down the sides holding onto them.

At the bottom:



there's this warning:



In fact, there are warnings like this all along the river, including one I saw 30 miles downstream that warned small boaters of "tsunamis" that could capsize them from releases way up here.

Across the river there is a concrete log chute from the top of the dam to the bottom:



It's five feet wide at the top and six at the bottom (better than the other way around, eh?). The last log drive down the Kennebec was in 1976 (the dam was built in 1954).

There were rafters taking off right as I got there. Interestingly enough, this bunch was all instructor trainees. I chatted with the head instructor, who told me several had already dropped out, saying, "They didn't realize what they'd gotten themselves into! Herding a raft-full of people who capsized in a class 4 rapid to safety ain't easy!"

He also told me the water was 41 degrees F.

The board at the checkin station showed that the dam was letting out 7900 cubit feet of water per second. By my calculations, that's roughly an Olympic-sized swimming pool every three seconds!





I have got to do this one of these days.

I'll add more to the story later.

[EvilClown]

Originally Posted by SheRidesABeemer

I see an opportunity to get the tag to Cape Bretton Island...

I double-dog dare ya!

Nice tag, Squidmark.