FIFTY STATES AWAYFinally we’ve arrived in Maine! Whilst we’ve been on the states we’ve seen a fair amount of American TV in the evenings, often enjoying the Discovery channel and Animal Planet. There’s been a program that aired about the Fish and Game warden’s of Maine, so we’ve been looking forward to seeing if it looks anything like it does on the telly. Driving around yesterday gave the impression that the state seems fairly remote. It reminds me of Alaska and Michigan with little country roads and lots of tall pine trees, and that quiet feel.
It was time for that all important but difficult decision; what exciting things will we get up to today? Yesterday we stopped short of our initial target, mainly due to tiredness meaning our intended activity was at least two hours away and over 100 miles. It was difficult to get up as we were both still quite sleepy this morning and wanted to do something relatively easy today. Luckily I had another look around and our motel had an interesting leaflet which turned out to be an hour south, the direction we’d intended to head to after our visit to Maine. It’s strange but sometimes things just work out! So off we headed to Maine Wildlife Park, to spend a soothing day wandering around in forest areas with the animals. It was nice to get some fresh air and the park was visually stunning, as has been a common across the states. We started off taking a stroll around the ‘Cat’ area, where we were able to watch great animals such as the Bobcat, Lynx and Cougar. I appeared to have great luck as I was snapping photos of the cats, they seemed to look right at me, it was a fantastic start to the day 🙂
I was really pleased with the this experience, which seemed to give us both some much needed energy we headed on along the trails reaching the bear area. I’d heard that for a quarter (18 pence) I could feed a bear, with this intriging information I was eager to find out if there was truth in the matter. The large forest area held two adolescent black bears, one was busy having a scratch over by some trees and the other was wandering much closer to the glass at the viewing area, climbing over their Rocky den. It was indeed true as I slipped my quarter into one of those bubble gum machines. Food dispensed down a tube and settled in a little dish, there was a foot pedal on my side that I stepped on and it turned the dish over chucking the food down into the enclosure. Sure enough the young bear came over to have a munch and even glanced up at me at just the perfect time.
By this time I was estatic with the photographs I’d taken and couldn’t believe how amazing the day had been so far, there was much more to go as we continued on down the trail. We were just in time to see a Cayote being fed! We stopped to watch for a little while before going on to see one animal that we’d had a brief glimpse of in Alaska, the moose! The wild moose we saw by the roadside was huge, and again we were in luck! The moose here at the park were laying in the shade close to fence, one of which was facing us I stayed quiet and approached managing to get quite close. It seemed this one was having a snack and not only did I get a great picture but I managed to video it, I was not aware of how loud a moose can chew!
There were plenty of other animals to see, trails to follow and a pre-packed picnic lunch waiting for us in these magnificent surroundings. It’s really been an amazing day and we can’t thank the animals and Maine enough, what a blast! 🙂
