University of Maine Forest

Columbus Day - October 12, 2009
Back in Maine, Peggy joined Agent S. and OnTheCorner in the hunt for some new letterboxes close to home, at the University of Maine hiking trails in Orono. A beautiful autumn day provided great letterboxing weather and scenery. Today's target was the UMaine Series just planted by AdventureCrafter and Aiphid.

Along the way we stopped so Peggy could find the older boxes on this same trail - some of our first finds & our own plants. First up - The Giving Tree by Mickey at the intersection of Trails 3 and 5. Here we also found a well traveled hitch-hiker called "Jump Start Juice" (may sound familiar to Peggy's family, they are loggged in it!) Actually if we'd properly followed directions for the UMaine Series (or rather if the start of Trail 3 were marked better) we wouldn't have come this way, but it was nice that we did.

Next up on our impromptu stops, Bananas T. Bear. This friendly UMaine mascot was one of my first carves and plants! It is hiding behind the red pole on Trail 3.

Following the trail further we come to a 4 way intersection of trails 7, 8 and 9. Once upon a time searching for A Horse Named Chip we got very lost in the woods on trail 7. We saw lots of wild animals that day, inspiring the planting of "Oh Deer! How did I get here"and "While Lost in the Woods" - both of which Peggy found today!

Here we are at While Lost in the Woods, it hides behind this stump under a suspicious pile of sticks.Now that the boxes we know have been found, it was on to the new ones - Trail 9, here we come! Box #1 - 1865 (that is the year of UMaine's founding) we found without any trouble. Peggy sits on its hiding spot here below.
also she gets a better look from above

Here we had a picnic lunch and then continued on in search of Box 2. The clue said we could take a short cut to bypass part of loop 9, but we first thought this was a bad idea for us - we tend to miss the turn-offs if the trails aren't marked well. After walking part of the very swampy long-cut trail we realized why there was a short cut, so we turned around and took that. Thought we were doing pretty well at following directions ... until we found ourselves back where we'd started at the 7,8,9 intersection! No signs of where we went wrong looking for trail 6. Pictured to the left is a long stretch of trail 9 - yes that is the trail, not a river (supposedly!) - and perhaps why we did not backtrack to figure out what we did wrong. But we did manage to locate Box #3 - Athletics (a much fiercer version of our mascot Bananas than the one I planted).