This is a trail, only a few miles away, that for some reason, we had never done. We started from the parking lot on Bennoch Rd. and followed it to it's end and then back.
The river is fairly wide here and quite attractive.
A section of trail crosses private land and contains this lovely stand of trees.
Kelley, of course, was very excited about the river and all that swimming.
We also met a nice fellow and his dog which Kelley got to play with for awhile. There was a large flock of geese on the water but before I could get close a boat came past and sent them into the sky.
A very pleasant walk of 1 1/4 hours.
Looks like a very pleasant hike.
ReplyDeleteIt was. Thanks for commenting.
ReplyDeleteBack in the early '80s, when a student at UMaine, I lived in the now-burnt-down apartment building next to the parking lot on Bennoch Rd. And I discovered this before it was a trail.
ReplyDeleteIt is an old railroad track, probably from the days of logging, and I found it shown on a 1905 Maine Central RR map of railroads in Maine, although it isn't clear if it was still in use at the time or not. This was only a decade after the last log drive and installation of sewerage treatment plants, and there was still some sort of sewerage draining up by where the nursing home was, possibly a CFO (Combined Sewer Overflow).
As best I could tell, a main sewer line had been routed down this old railbed and that is what that concrete bridge abutment is -- that is how the sewer line(s) cross the drainage ditch -- the vertical walls are the retaining walls, with the pipes encased in the horizontal. Going upriver, before you come to the private property (which may not be private if the town purchased the entire railbed for a sewer route), there used to be a gravel road that went up to the Bennoch Road which I presumed was the access road used both for constructing the line initially and possibly for maintaining it (i.e. pumping out clogs).
I discovered it my senior year and it is where I used to go to study when I wanted to get away from everything/everyone. Had we laptops back then, I would have written my papers there as well...
Thanks for the history UMO. Are you still in the area?
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