Monday (June 24) – Bob woke up this morning and decided no hiking today. Our legs are tight. So we went bridge chasing instead. There were three located about a half hour north we wanted to see. Swiftwater was the closest – built in 1849 and nearly 174’ long. These things are amazing. Even though it was still early morning (9:30) the sun was high and it was really bright.

Haverhill-Bath wasn’t too far away. This bridge is believed to be the oldest covered bridge in the state was built in 1829, over 256’ long and restored most recently in 2004 – open to foot traffic only.

Riverwalk Bridge, renamed Veteran’s Memorial Bridge in 2002 is a dedicated memorial to those fallen heros from the town of Littleton – open to foot traffic only. There is a lovely inn/brewery/restaurant in Woodstock just up the road from our peaceful abode in Lincoln that gets fabulous reviews. We enjoyed a lovely lunch at Woodstock Brewery sitting on the deck this afternoon. Both beer and food were exceptional!!

The rest of the afternoon was spent just chilling and resting up for our big night of moose hunting. For real. It’s a thing. We’re going on a moose tour tonight. Who knew? We leave at dusk and don’t get back until midnight. This company boasts a 97% success rate with a record of 25 sightings in one night. They’ve been in business for 21 years. Crossing our fingers we are not in the 3% group tonight. Pemi Valley Moose Tours.

Fast forward – we saw 5 different moose tonight and a couple of them more than once (they drive the same road multiple times so if the moose gets startled and retreats he leaves and they come back out). They salt the roads up here for snow and ice. When it rains and the snow melts the salt flows off into bogs on the side of the road. The moose love the salt so they tend to be found along those marshy places off the side of the road. At night. Moose are herbivores, eating only tree bark and green leaves (whether on trees or at the bottom of the lakes). The road we drove back and forth on up until our bathroom break at 10:00 was a dud. But the road we drove after the break we hit the jackpot – almost immediately. I don’t know how much of that was because it was a different road and how much was just timing. He said a lot of the time they don’t see any until after the break, so maybe it’s just because it’s later and darker. This bus holds 51 people and it fills up most nights – we had 48 tonight. I was amazed at how quiet it was. Larry (our driver) and Ken (our guide) emphasized how important it was to be quiet. Moose have extremely sensitive hearing and can be startled easily. We even had quite a few kids in our group, some pretty as young as 4 and 5 years old. Everyone was quiet as a mouse most of the time. The night went fast – after all these years they know how to keep a bus full of people entertained. Quite an interesting and fun evening! (I took mostly video and one still so nothing really worth sharing but check out their facebook page – they share videos daily.)

Tuesday (June 25) – Tried to sleep in after our late night last night. It was close to 1am before we actually turned out the light. What do my lovely ears hear at 7am this morning? Bob’s alarm! He forgot to turn it off. Why it’s on to begin with I don’t understand. He’s usually awake by 7 anyway! WTBH. I got nuthin’. No idea what he did after he turned it off but I grumpily turned over and tried to go back to sleep. I dozed on and off but never really got back to sleep. And somewhere around 8am I heard a bloody week whacker. Really? It went on and on and on. I finally got my fat butt up and looked out the window around 8:30 and this idgit was across the street week whacking around a sign in the overgrown lot. It was over an hour later when we left our Motel 8 room and he had just quit – probably because it had started raining. Crazy I tell you!! I wonder if he’s planning to finish the entire lot? We leave in the morning so I won’t be here to find out and I’m totally okay with that.

It certainly wasn’t a hiking day today with the rain – even though it was just spitting at this point. Bridge chasing it was. There were several on the other side of the area in Crawford State Park. Not a whole lot to see on the drive – it’s mostly a hiking park (which is all of them around here). If you don’t hike it there isn’t much else to do. Jackson River Bridge (aka Honeymoon Bridge), built in 1876, was first up on the map. So pretty!

Jackson Falls is a short drive away and so worth it. Sure wish it had been a pretty day so we could’ve set our tripods up to really play with shooting these falls.

Next up was Swift River Bridge, built in 1850 and was put out of commission in 1974 when a concrete and steel bridge was built nearby. It now houses some picnic tables for the area and a couple was taking advantage of that to escape the rain. (You can see how hard it was raining in the bottom pic.)

Last but not least, the Saco River Bridge, built in 1890 and restored in 1989 – definitely my favorite bridge of the day. I just loved the setting. Would’ve been a great place to just hang out, except for the bugs. (This one was one of my favorites.)

It was 2:30-3:00 by the time we drove back via the Kancamagus Highway. The restaurant/bar downstairs had their Taco Tuesday special going on and we didn’t feel like driving in the rain anymore so $2 tacos with an Allagash White beer was dinner tonight. Packing up and heading to Vermont tomorrow.