On Tuesday, early in the morning, I drove up to Augusta to take advantage of their paved running/biking path that runs along the river south for 6.5 miles. By running a short section of the path twice, I was able to take advantage of the wonderfully cool weather and run about fifteen miles. The biggest issue was the small, rolling hills along the path. By the time I got back to the car, my hamstrings were in a fair amount of pain.
Once I got back to the house and Mer and I got ready for the day, we jumped in the car and took a winding and scenic route south and west to the the New Hampshire border, to the town of Fryeburg, Maine. Fryeburg is best known for its fair in the fall, having the second biggest fair in New England, after the one outside of Boston. It’s an odd place for a huge fair, since the town only has a few thousand people, but that is what it is known for.
We were there because I wanted a scenic drive, but also because the town had a company that offered kayak rentals to paddle on the shallow and slow Saco River. It seemed like an ideal place to try kayaking. Before the big river adventure, we ate at one of the three restaurants we could find in town, the Fryeburg House of Pizza and Family Restaurant. The food was decent, although the air conditioning was cranked to an uncomfortable level, even for me.
On the way back to the kayak place, we stopped briefly to check out Fryeburg Academy, a private high school with a dorm option for out-of-town students. It was very pretty, with several brick buildings and large athletic fields. I later looked up tuition, and decided that forty thousand dollars a year (for boarding students) should buy some scenic views.
The kayak folks did have a kayak for us, so we opted for the shortest trip, a ninety-minute excursion down the river to a landing where the company would pick us up. We had a tandem (two-person) kayak, with Mer in the front and me in the back. We felt comfortable in the boat right away as far as stability, and as the river was never deeper than three or four feet, we felt quite safe. Most of the time, the river was only about a foot deep, with a sandy bottom, so it really was a perfect place to try kayaking.
The day was fine, and the river pretty. The only frustration we had was that our kayak did not steer well. We had always seen that kayaks would turn away from the side you paddled on. So, if you paddled on the right-hand side, the kayak would go slightly left. For whatever reason, our kayak would do that occasionally, but more often it would turn toward the rowing side. Even when we tried correcting for this by rowing on both sides, we never did get the kayak to go where we wanted it without my dragging my paddle in the water as a break. We will need to try kayaking again sometime to see if it was just that particular kayak.
Despite the steering issues, the trip was worthwhile because of the surroundings. We often chose to drift to enjoy the river, and while there were people about on and in the river enjoying it, we often had stretches of the river to ourselves. We made it to the landing in about seventy-five minutes, and by luck the company was there picking up some other people, so we did not have to wait.
Once we got back to the car, I decided to drive north to Bethel, Maine, as that would take us through the White Mountain National Forest. What an incredible drive. The forest was very dense on both sides, and the road wound up into the western Maine mountains. We even zigzagged into New Hampshire a few times. It was the prettiest place I saw inland on this trip to Maine.
Once we got to Bethel, we drove back through Rumford and on to Jay, and back through Livermore Falls, back to Dad’s. At least I figured out how to steer the car.