Can we see your fishing license ma'am...

With another beautiful August weekend forecast, Ben and I decided to finally get the canoe out from behind the house and take it for a spin. We headed to Lake Umbagog, which is located north of Berlin, NH and straddles the NH/ME border. Their are primitive remote campsites owned and operated by a NH state campground that you can get to only by boat. Serendipity would have it that there was only one primitive site available for us to get, so we decided to go check it out!

We parked the car right off Rt. 16 in the town of Errol, NH to put the canoe in on the Androscoggin River, and paddle 2 miles to the lake. We got on the river about 9am, with a calm paddle in. We saw a pair of loons (above pic) on the water paddling across the lake to our campsite. The haunting cry of these birds were one of the highlights of the weekend.

There are not very many pictures of our paddle across the lake because the winds picked up and the lake was quite choppy, and a few motor boats here and there added to the waves. Getting the camera out was not an option! Finding the campsite added to the challenge, as the lake has many small inlets and points that jut out, looking for just the right one was tricky! When we finally found it, the folks that had stayed there the night before were just about gone, and they definitely had the right boat for the job: a sailboat!

Our site was very private, the next one being around the next point. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the Maine woods (our campsite was on the Maine side of the lake) were vibrant with deep greens...

This is a close-up of Club Moss (Lycopodium for you science nerds), growing at our campsite.

There was a very big (I'm talking huge) rotting stump that was covered with these shelf fungus. In fact, it has been quite the summer for fungus, with all of the wet weather...

I took this pic looking for firewood near the site. The sun was reflecting off of the lake and shining through the trees...

Here's Ben building a fire for our chow. He did an amazing job! We cooked some chicken, corn, and potatoes on the fire that night.

So, I was totally wondering what "primitive toilet" meant on the Lake Umbagog Campground website, and this is it. No privy, just a big plastic barrel with a toilet seat on it, right in the woods. It really put a new meaning to "when nature calls"...

The clouds were quite amazing that afternoon, huge and puffy with dark underbellies. Ben and I spent the afternoon hanging out on the rock watching the sky...

Ha ha we truly look like twins in this picture... except I am wearing a visor and Ben is wearing a portable awning.

Besides watching the sky, we did some fishin'...we both caught perch right from our rock. None were big enough to keep, but we had fun catching them. Kinda looks like Ben is walking on water in this pic!

Another activity that kept us busy on this "hectic" afternoon was watching the sunset over the lake.

Going...

Going...

Gone...

What a beautiful sky that day...

We had a great night, eating our campfire grub, and went to bed with the sounds of the loons to lull us to sleep. Because we weren't backpacking and I brought luxuries like my pillow, I slept like a baby. The next morning, Ben the early bird had us up at 5:00 am. This strategy seemed to be sound, as the water is calmest then and paddling across the lake would be much easier. It takes us a few hours to get packed up and eat breakfast, so I agreed to get up at this ungodly hour on a Sunday morning. But alas, a pea-soup fog enshrouded the lake, so it seemed like a more sound idea to go back to bed, and that we did. THAT was glorious.

This is what the lake was like at 8am, when we left camp. Absolutely gorgeous day ahead of us, blue sky, and a lake like glass.

Action shot of the sternsman...

We got across the lake with no one else around...it was heaven. When we got to the eastern side of the lake, we took hours exploring the marshes and inlets and FISHING the whole time. Here's Ben at a water break...

Boy the fish were biting that day. We had these crazy rubber-like worms that we used to try and catch something (like a bass), and they were really brightly colored with sparkles...I thought they didn't look like anything a fish would think was food. Boy was I wrong! The pickerel were really biting these crazy worm things, but alas we didn't have any metal leaders on our lines, so they were biting these right off of our lines. (So yes, pickerel have teeth...and I wonder what happens after they bite this rubber worm off...do they figure out it isn't really food and spit it out eventually? Or do they not really taste it and it goes down the gullet, only to get stuck in their digestive tract? Do they poop it out or do they get sick? So many questions!)

One of the most interesting things that happened that day fishing was that a NH fish and game boat pulled up near us and asked us to paddle over so they could check our licenses! That had never happened to me before...luckily I actually remembered to bring it this time! (If you will recall from the last post, the weekend before was the the trip where Andrea Forgot Everything. I made up for it on this trip...)

The marshy, side ponds attached to the lake were awesome. Here is a picture of a Water Lily in bloom. They are truly amazing plants.

The highlight of the trip for me was seeing a bald eagle! I saw it on Saturday when we were paddling in...there is no mistaking the white tail feathers. I was then completely amazed when it flew over the campsite when I was standing on the rock and I could see it's white head and brown feathers. It took my breath away! (Actually, I screamed "Eagle! Eagle!)


Sorry he was so high up in the sky, so you can't see anything really, but that's an eagle, I swear...

We had the most glorious day exploring, and we vow to come back to this lake again. If anyone has a canoe, or wants to rent one from the campground, we would love to go back and stay at one of the primitive remote sites again. We know which site we would pick...right next to an awesome fishing place right on an island! And next time, I'm gonna catch me a pickerel!