The Quest: Day Three

Okay - so we were fairly sure the quest had been accomplished. But really? Is 500 boxes enough for one person? There's 600, 700 and beyond. And we still had boxes and places to visit on our list yet to tackle. We had a couple that were those darling Blue Diamonds that we both wanted, and smartly decided against getting in the dark.

After our morning fuel up (And yes, this time we packed provisions in the form of a donut a piece.) of that incredibly sustaining Kashi oatmeal and juice we packed up our coffee and hot cocoa and headed off to our first box. Gathering up our stuff - which when carrying hot beverages really does require two trips to the car - frost scraped from the windshield - we checked out of the hotel and started on our daily voyage. First stop - all the way across the street!

Dang! I didn't even have a second sip of coffee and we were back out of the car! LOL! So off we went in search of our first morning box. And what do we come across - the trail has a river running through it! Granted the frost was tipping the edges of the grass on either side of the river, but we had gone almost ALL weekend without getting muddy or wet and we wanted to keep a clean record - and dry feet. So off we head on the round about loop to our destination. We were in search of 'The Queen's Throne.'

Its a very peaceful place at 7am on a Monday morning. A couple birds did voice a loud protesting call at us disturbing their early morning siesta, but other than that - there was not a lot of movement. We looked high and low and didn't see any sign of 'The Queen.' Granted I wasn't too sure if I was looking for a peacock or the Queen of Hearts, but no Queen showed her regal face that morning. (Probably way to early for royalty to be up and about.) But we did find what we were seeking in this location and headed off to "The Egg." It was then that I decided - if it was "The Queen" that layed this egg, it was probably a good thing we hadn't found her. There's absolutely NO WAY she could have ever been in a good mood after laying this egg!

Back at the car, we reached happily for our coffee and cocoa. Dang - it was cold! Almost as cold as we were. Our options, stop and turn around to get some coffee before heading on - or suck on our cold beverages and trek on. You guessed it - we trekked on! Our motto - so many bboxes, so little time. Besides, the faster we could get back to Ellsworth, the faster we could get some Sweet Tea! (You call it addiction, we call it required beverage material when boxing!) So off we went in search of our first Blue Diamond.

We headed back out towards Acadia and headed over to the trail we searched out the night before. The path was wide and clear and we hiked on. A time was given for the approximate amount of time it should take to complete the hike - we added 20 minutes : ) Pine needle laden and wide, the path quickly turned and became a bit more narrow. We were diligent in seeking out our needed markers - how many Senturies could possibly be in the woods of Maine??? After all, Maine only has 17 million acres of forests... so two trees should be a piece of cake to find!

You guessed it - a little bit of dumb luck and a little bit of walking backwards and we found our Blue Diamond! Woohoo! And with it was a hiker! Our first of the weekend! And other folks had actually been here and left it behind! They must have know we were coming! Yeah! Someone did read the messages I had written by those skywriters! Another one off the list! And another one's gone and another one's gone. Another one's off the list! Yes, we sing and dance when this happens. We have other songs and siren calls when we are out seeking other boxes... but that's a different story.

Back we walked to the car... the path seemed much longer on the return trip than on the one to the box. Kind of odd. But we were headed off to tackle the fine township of Lemoine. And in Lemoine was another Blue Diamond! We circled the booming town and visited the Lemoine State Park and the Lemoine Beach. We visited a cemetary and a church and a preserve! We rescued a lock and lock from sunburn as it had thrown itself out into the late mornings warming rays. After a quick chat with the lock and lock about providing proper protection of leaves, sticks and rocks we left it with only the hope it would heed our advise.

We headed back and realized that we were a touch off our time line again. Oh well. We did manage to conquer Lamoine in fine style! And only a couple people looked at us like we had lost our way. We didn't even manage to do too many u-turns. But then again the town does practically run its roads like a loop trail. we did have to pull over to snap a couple photos. One of a field of approximately 30 wild turkeys. I think Tea was a bit shocked when I started to 'call' to them in their 'native' tongue. But she was able to recover from laughing long enough to continue to drive.

We still had a couple cemetaries to conquer in Ellsworth and one was frighfully close to Tea's sister's house. Okay - so you couldn't see her house on the raods we were on, but Tea was convinced her sister would see her so we drove past her road and held our breath in case we got caught. We found our cemetary and our box. Add that to the checks in the found column! Woop! Woop!

Then it was off to a nursery. This would probably be the hardest dang box to get all weekend! we were told the long story of where the pair of geese spent their winter (New Hampshire) and that they would be getting crated in the next couple days or so to head south for the winter. Now call me crazy - but New Hampshire is not all that south from Maine! Even more perplexing was how one could possibly believe wintering in New Hampshire would give you better weather than wintering in Maine! We have almost the identical weather in the winter! But we listened. And listened. And then I went off in search of a pumpkin. Now normally we wouldn't knock the customer service. But we were the only ones there and they were insistent on helping us! We had no way to know if the owners knew about the box or not, so we didn't want to tip our hand. I left Tea high and dry with the goal of getting the box to her car. I thought if I bought the perfect pumpkin - maybe they would give Tea a wide enough berth to grab the box. we could see it... we just couldn't get anything to distract our two helpful men!

Well, pumpkin in hand and a slip to pay for it. I managed to distract one of them lon g enough for Tea to grab the box and stampus into it. Now the goal was to get the box back into play. More stories... "Did you know swans mate for life?" "No, really?" "What does it mean when one fluffs up their feathers?" "Oh, that's the male trying to attract the female." "Really? How interesting. I think I'll just get a couple more pictures, they are beautiful birds." Yadda, yadda, yadda... keep walking, keep walking. Just a bit further. Yup and the box is back out of sight and into play once again. With a thumbs up, Tea snapped the last couple of shots, we commented on some Oriental themed planters and high tailed it back to the car. (By the way - that ten dollar pumpkin is still on my propane tank - waiting to be carved for Halloween - do you think it will last until next year???)

Image and pumpkin in tow, we headed off to a train trestle. We parked and walked around to follow the clues. Of course its up. What else would I think? Tea headed up first and dislodged the box from its hiding spot. I followed using her backpack as a foil for the thistles and burdocks. He pack was covered with them. We stamped up and watch a few cars pass us by without even a glance up at us. Two women hanging over the top of a train trestle must be normal in Ellsworth. No worries. But we decided to just go back up the foot over the tracks and back to the car instead of tackling the fall flora.

We debunked ourselves of hikers before continuing south. Off we headed to Indian Point. Not back tracking to where we had been, Indian Point in Ellsworth. We were heading out onto a trail that was set up by a high school program. The trail system has two trails that merge on and off from one another. The mail trail has traditional markers, but the one we needed had rocks with blue blazes painted on them. We actually had to pick up a couple of them and place them back where they needed to be to be visiable. Many of the educational markers were gone, but we did manage to find two of the three boxes in one series and a lovely little troll under a bridge here. And the point had a lovely picnic type area. There were many benches that afforded a great view of downtown Ellsworth. I fear once the housing developement is completely, this spot will loose much of its tranquility. But we needed to get back. We had one more stop in Ellsworth before heading home.

While Tea and I love cemetaries, boxes in stonewalls - not so much. Especially when the stonewall is already in near disarray. Clues lead you to believe its in the lower section of the wall. But this wall was all lower section. It had been picked apart and tossed asunder. Sadly it was also riddled with broken glass. Every time I tried to shift a stone that tiny voice would climb up on my shoulder and give me a big slap. It just didn't seem right. There were other noticable places close by to plant a box. Why here? Well, needless to say - this box eluded us. And I fear it wasn't there anymore to begin with. But it was a great place to visit. We walked past two folks playing croquet and made our way back to the car.

Now on our way north we missed a couple boxes. It was our plan to pick them up one our return trip. One had a time limit on it as the gate closed at 5pm. We had also missed the Tour the Fort series at Fort Knox. But a couple of the locations had taken longer than planned so we knew both of these would elude us on the return trip as well. We did want The Masks by Jiffy and guess what - they were waiting for us in a cemetary! Now we needed to get to the road they were on. The 'offramp' we could see... but how on earth do you get to it? Well we fell onto a road and took a stab that this was where we needed to be. Yup - we were right on! Picking up these boxes and another hiker - we started for home. The sun was dipping faster than we were driving.

Somewhere along the way we did a uturn so i could take a photograph of those Easter Egg cabins. On the way north - they just struck me as funny. But by the total lack of reaction from the gentleman cutting wood nearby - me snapping photos was obviously not unusual. We drove on until we reached Camden. There had been a box at the ampetheater... so we thought we'd give it a quick run by. I almost scared 10 years off Tea when I went in behind her (I was the diversion taking photos of the evening sun reflecting on the harbor) to see how her luck was. Found the location - no box though.

Back into the car we continued closer to home. It was getting late, and we were both running low on steam. we decided to pass the last box on our list - which had started out as our first box only two days before. Back in Brunswick, we transferred my things to my waiting car and were both grateful we would be sleeping in our own beds tonight!

Final count... I picked up 80 boxes and 3 hikers. Tea added a little more than 40 to her count and we logged 350 plus miles on her car over the three day excursion. Did we get them all? Heck no - but that just gives us another reason to go back. July 2009 can't roll around fast enough! So start planting up there - we'll be back!