Moose Alley and more

The most effective speed control device in Quebec, New Brunswick and Maine is the moose warning sign. I've shown just one example, but there were several variations on the theme.

And, in Madawaska, everyone who discussed my route south told me to watch out for moose.

I rode to Fort Kent, Maine because, as the sign says, it is the northern end of U.S. Highway 1. Mile 0, the southern end is in Key West. You can see a photo of me at that point in the Alaska trip blog.

From Fort Kent I took Maine Highway 11 south. The road wasn't identified as such, but to me it was "Moose Alley." The photo of the animal drinking from water in a roadside ditch shows the first and smallest moose I saw on the Alley. If you click on the photo you might get a better feel for the bulk of these animals. This small one was the size of a horse. In about 100 miles of Highway 11 I slowed for five moose, four of which were crossing the road in front of me.

The bike has antilock brakes, and can slow without skidding quite well. In fact, I practiced stopping from 60 miles per hour to make certain that I could do it if one of these "swamp mules" bolted out of the woods in my path.

Several folks in Madawaska mentioned that there had been some fatalities this year from car-moose encounters. I was not interested in there being a motorcycle-moose encounter.

At lunch I picked up a copy of the St. John Valley Times and read that the paper was protesting a closed meeting of a local governing body. Since I have the opportunity to fight those fights for South Carolina's newspapers and broadcasters, I stopped by the paper to applaud the effort to achieve open government. Don Levesque, the publisher/editor of the paper, explained that there is a constant effort to achieve open government. We have the same problem in South Carolina.

When I got to the intersection of Highway 11 and I-95 I stopped for a cup of coffee and a snack. I would have preferred to take a nap, but the black flies are so aggressive in Maine that I was worried there wouldn't have been enough of me left to fill out my riding suit had I been exposed to them for 15 minutes.

While drinking my coffee I had the good fortune to meet Merrill Stiles. Merrill is 64 years old, looks 54, and has been a logger for 50 years.

I grew up ojn the legends of the loggers of the north woods, and on this trip have passed through several timber regions where there have been statues of Paul Bunyan and his blue ox Babe.

Merrill explained that modern logging is a capital intensive business, and machines have replaced lumberjacks. Merrill said when he started logging the trees were cut by hand and the logs were dragged from the woods by horses.

Today a cutting machine can cut in one week what it used to take 10 men to cut. The 10 men would have been using $500 chainsaws, but the cutting machine costs $350,000. To recover the cost of the machine Merrill's employer, M. Daigle & Sons Logging, runs the cutting machine 24 hours a day five days a week. The machine grasps the trunk of the tree and holds it while a blade cuts it. The felled trees are then bunched by a machine and then the bunches of trees are hauled to the road by a grapple skidder.

I saw a grapple skidder at the gas station where I met Merrill. It had a bulldozer blade on the front and arms on the back that looked like very sturdy spider legs. Unlike a bulldozer the skidder had rubber tires about two feet wide and five feet high. The tires on the skidder I saw had chains to keep them from getting stuck in the muck.

Once the logs are hauled to the roadside another machine strips the limbs from the trees and cuts the trunk to the desired length. The cut timber is then loaded on a truck for transport to the sawmill or paper mill.

Merrill estimated that a contemporary logging company would have at least $1 million invested in equipment before the first tree is felled.

I asked about the lumberjack competitions that are shown on television, and Merrill explained that the chainsaw and axe competitions shown are just hobbies now. The skills extolled in the stories of the woods and celebrated in these competitions aren't need now.