Peaks-Kenny State Park
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Our 10th weekend camping trip took us to Peaks-Kenny State Park in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, about 200 miles from home (199, to be exact)—a trip that took us a little more than 3 hours. Like Mt. Blue State Park, which we visited last weekend (and only stayed for a night), Peaks-Kenny is a family campground. And, at times, that meant kids of all ages zooming by on bikes and screaming. We get it, they’re kids being kids. And as non-parents, it’s easy for us to wonder why kids need to always be screaming. Parents who are reading this: I have no idea how you do it all and not lose your sh*t all of the time. NO. FREAKING. IDEA. When it comes to campgrounds, Cobscook Bay State Park spoiled us; we got a sense of what it was like to camp in solitude, silence disrupted only by the sounds of birds or water lapping the shoreline. My dream? To create some sort of zen-like campground experience—silent retreat meets outdoor experience, if you will. But, until then, we’ll keep checking out campgrounds in our quest for “our best.” Did Peaks-Kenny make the list? Read on.
First, Peaks-Kenny is beautiful, with its 839 acres in the Maine Highlands. We had never traveled to this part of Maine, as we’ve tended to stick to the state’s giant coastline for the last 20+ years. And, as we noticed driving into Mt. Blue last week, this is a region of Maine that feels very strongly in its support of the current president. Campaign signs dotted the majority of yards on the roads leading to the park. And, like Mt. Blue SP, Peaks-Kenny features a gorgeous lakefront setting. I’m not a good judge of sizes when it comes to lakes (they all look pretty big to me), but Sebec Lake is more than 6000 acres, featuring depths of more than 150 feet, with an average depth of about 40 feet. The lake is rimmed by pine trees (this is, after all, the Pine Tree State), with the silhouette of the nearly 2,000-foot Borestone Mountain rising up from the horizon. Standing at the beach and looking out—well, it’s an impressive view. The view is even better from inside the packraft, but I’ll get to that!
Our site, #53, was okay—wooded and semi-private. We could see into the sites around us, but there was at least a bit more space than there had been at Mt. Blue. Still, not as private or quiet as we’d like, but we definitely didn’t feel like the sites were on top of each other. There are 56 sites at the park, and we were somewhat surprised to see that the vast majority of sites had travel trailers and not tents. In fact, we saw very few tents—but lots of cute teardrops and other standard-style travel trailers. Hookups (water and electricity) are available at Peaks-Kenny, and the park does have a dump station, so that’s convenient for RVs (check out this page for Maine State Parks and RV/Camper-specific info). While there aren’t any waterfront sites, the trail down to the lake was just across from our site and only about 1/4 mile long. There was one main bathhouse and a few other toilets throughout the park, but, as has been the case all summer, we didn’t make use of any public facilities, opting instead to use our trusty Nemo Heliopolis/Luggable Loo combo.
We planned a three-day weekend to Peaks-Kenny and headed up to the park on a Thursday. The weather was gorgeous. By the time morning rolled around, however, that all changed. We woke to rain and cool temps; the chilly temps and gray skies would persist throughout the day. Honestly, had this been a two-day trip, we would have just headed home. But we were able to get service down at the lake to check the weather, and Saturday’s forecast looked promising. We decided to stick it out. I added more layers, curled up in my Rumpl, hung out in the van for a few hours, and read. We also chatted at length about our next van. We love our 2002 VW Eurovan Weekender, but now that we’ve spent more than 40 nights between last summer and this one (so far!), we’re starting to get a sense of what we’d like in our next rig. For starters, a little more space, a kitchen, and, yes, a bathroom (no disrespect to the pee tent—if you’ve been following the blog, you know how much I love our Heliopolis and Luggable Loo!).
While the day’s weather was challenging, we got a glimpse of what life might be like if we were full-timers (my eventual dream—not so much G’s…not yet!). After all, not every day can be perfect—at least not in New England!
We woke Saturday to fantastic weather, and we spent a few hours on the water in our packrafts. I’ve written in previous posts that I didn’t necessarily love the packraft when we first bought them last year. I wondered if I had made a fairly expensive mistake. But, with a few more paddles under my belt this year, the raft has totally grown on me—so much so that I’m planning a more in-depth blog post soon.
Looking forward to the day’s sunshine and calm waters, I shoved everything but the raft (towel, paddles, PFD paddles, water bottle, and extra shirt) in my backpack, grabbed the packraft, G grabbed his stuff, and we headed down the path to the lake. Within ten minutes, rafts were inflated, paddles snapped together, and we were in the water. Every time I think about other options (inflatable SUPs or a sleeker inflatable kayak), I weigh the pros/cons. So far, on every measure, the packraft wins out. Would I like to go faster? Of course. Would I like to track better/straighter. Absolutely. Do I like SUPping more? Yes. But right now, the ability to be on the water in minutes (and to be all packed back up within 10 minutes as well) with a minimalist (and lightweight) package wins every time.
The absolute best part of the paddle—beating even the views—was our unexpected company: a loon. We were probably within 20-25 feet of it for quite a bit of time. We’d paddle, and it would duck its head (no pun!) and take off underwater. Then, a few minutes later, it would be right in front of us. For a while, we just floated along and watched it, snapping photos from our phones and just enjoying the moment. Far away from the beach, we were surrounded by water, pine trees, and rocks—and, best of all, silence, interrupted only by the sounds of our paddles cutting through the water.
This weekend, we enjoyed some good food—the second batch of mac & cheese I had made (and frozen) the previous week using this recipe. I also made blueberry crisp over the fire, and that was fantastic. As I joked with G, the rest of the weekend’s food would be all downhill from there—just buffalo chicken sandwiches in the pie irons and then flatbreads the final night with the leftover buffalo chicken. We did treat ourselves to cinnamon rolls in the pie irons as well. So yummy. I would highly recommend Annie’s cinnamon rolls, as they’re perfectly sized for the pie irons (though we did experiment putting two in at once—a bit doughier and more unevenly cooked). As we head into the last weeks of summer (!!??), I hope to experiment with a few more casserole-type dishes or even chili and then more season-inspired desserts—apple crisp, for sure.
And what would a T&G camping weekend be without games? We played cribbage, of course, with me losing, of course. We also decided to play two games that I had bought us for Christmas—Five Crowns and Quiddler. I’m happy to report both are fantastic—and super simple to learn and play. Five Crowns is a bit like rummy in that the goal is to make “runs” (sequence of 3+ cards in the same suit) and “books” (3+ cards of the same value). The object of the game (check out the rules here) is “to obtain the lowest number of points after playing all eleven hands of the game.” Quiddler is a bit like Scrabble in that the goal is to create words based on the cards in your hand. Like Five Crowns, there are rounds (8) and during each hand, the number of cards increases by one. So, in the first round/hand, you play with three cards; in the second, four, and so on. The object of the game, according to the rules, is “to obtain the highest number of points by combining the cards in your hand into words.” Here’s the game round-up for the weekend: Cribbage: G, 2-0; Five Crowns: T, 3-2; Quiddler: T, 2-1. Whoo-hoo! FINALLY!!
And last but definitely not least, we had to have something happen that would make for a good story when relaying the weekend to my family (and to the blog, of course). At Pillsbury State Park, it was me slamming the van door on G’s finger (which is healing nicely, by the way—he still has his nail intact, though it’s a lovely deeeeep purple/black). This weekend, it was G’s startle reflex. As we were sitting in our chairs by the fire, G kind of freaked out, brushed his hand against his quarter-zip, as if trying to get something off his shirt. I thought it was a stray ember from the fire, but I was also preoccupied with the hat I was knitting him on my loom. (Sidenote: that was a failed attempt. Just as I was finishing and cinching together the top, the yarn broke, the hat started to unravel, and since I don’t know enough about knitting to be able to fix it, I had to undo the hat and start over. Ugh.) And so all I see out of the corner of my eye is G jumping out of his chair and plucking something off his shirt and then kind of flinging it (it was not harmed, don’t worry). THIS had fallen out of a tree and right onto G (and the photo with his finger is for scale!!):
After a few moments during which we weren’t sure if G had accidentally killed the creature by flinging it off his shirt (he didn’t), we watched it “worm” away into the leaves. At that point, we had NO IDEA what in the hell it was…just that it was waaaaay bigger than any kind of caterpillar we had ever seen! After doing some online research once we got home and comparing way too many photos online to these, I think we’ve correctly identified it as a luna moth larvae (caterpillar). And if so, it’s a 5th-instar larva—next stop: cocoon. And then, next spring, a luna moth. Cool!
That about wraps up the weekend. Camping trip #10 and nights #22, 23, 24 of this summer are in the books. Peaks-Kenny was a good park (if we had kids, I’d probably consider it great), but will we return? To be honest, I doubt it. As it’s more than 3 hours away, there are parks closer to us that we like better. But we’re so glad we checked it out—our summer of socially distant camping excursions is helping us plan out next summer’s itinerary! And once we’ve logged the last trip of the season, I’ll be sure to post a round-up!