Day 5 smith Brook to Fred King Locomotive day

Day 5
We woke up late, at 9 a.m. An earned morning of sleeping in after our 12 mile paddle the day before. Dana said he wanted to make strawberry pancakes for breakfast, so I went with him to pick the berries. The rabbits must have picked through the patch the night before, but there were still plenty for us.
So we went back to camp and Dana made Bacon and wonderful strawberry pancakes! We packed up camp and were ready to leave when Dana noticed a giant Horse Leach swimming by shore. It had to be 8 inches long swimming. Dana poked and played with it for a bit before he let it swim off. An off we went at around noon.

Not far from shore, Dana trolling as we paddled across the lake, he caught the first trout of the day a 14-inch brookie. It made Dana’s day. He had a goal of catching a trout or salmon in every lake we paddled through and this took the pressure off for the day.
Our first stop was to see the famous trains of the Umbazookus Railroad (sounds like it should be a Dr. Seuss book)
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Luckily, a group was portaging over from Chamberlain, so we noticed the brightly colored gear near a beaver dam. The locomotives use to be visible from the lake, but the woods have now grown over and make them invisible.
The trains were GIGANTIC! Certainly not something you would expect to find in the North Maine woods, and you would never know they were there if you were just paddling through unguided.

As we paddled from Smith Brook to the tramway, we were being followed by a horrendously loud and obnoxious group of kids. They were now coming up on the tramway. The man who was with the group portaging from Chamberlain asked if we were with them. "No Way" was the quick reply.
The Portage group was planning to camp at Farm Island and the noisy kids were also planning on camping there but their leader said they might also camp at Priestly Point. So we knew where we would not be staying. Dana did have a conversation with the leader; they were both excited about the brook trout they had been catching just before the trains. Fish were rising everywhere!
We took off quickly trying to gain some distance between both groups and us. We passed Hog Island and made our way to Farm Island. Ranger Patrick came around the far side of Farm Island in his Boston Whaler, and came to check in with us. He told us about open campsites ahead, and we told him of what we knew of the groups. We also mentioned we would likely aim for the Fred King site. He said no one was at Fred King, but that, if we wanted to stay at the Zeigler site, there was an older quit couple there that would make good neighbors.
We passed Farm Island and headed toward the north shore of the lake, looking for a place to stop for lunch and stretch our legs. Another boat, a canoe with a motor was making its way east from the western cove.
As we got close, a motorized boat came around the corner. The weather was getting crummy, and we were paddling hard for shore. The warden’s boat stopped at the other boat first. and by the time he was on to us we had already hit shore. We actually stopped at a very large rock that was rather difficult to step onto.
We talked to the warden, stretched, and we figured we would eat somewhere it was easier to get into our food/ clothes boxes.
Ax we continued parallel to shore, passing Pine and stopping at priestly point campsites for a quick lunch. The next site was pump Handle, and we had seen the group of obnoxious kid’s paddle that way while we went the long way around farm island. Sure enough they were at Pump Handle.
The poor fellow guiding the group should get paid double for that trip. As we passed camp, 4 or 5 boys had their knives out and were talking about aiming and throwing their knives at other things and us. The man saw what was happing and went over to teach the boys some safe and necessary things about knives. As we rounded the corner, Dana heard one of the boy’s say, "that’s why the ranger is here he is right around the corner". That was a response to what would happen if you got hurt real bad out here. WOW!
We entered the cove at Snare Brook. The rangers cabin was on the left a short distance around the corner. Fred King was on the far end of the cove, and since we saw no one that was where we were headed. About halfway across we saw the wardens boat coming again. He pulled alongside and smiled. "I don’t know you will find anything out this way, but the Zeigler site has a nice spot open about a hundred yards from the other Zeigler site". We told him we were headed for Fred King and he still looked skeptical.

"Thanks but we’ll try for Fred King" and the warden was off. Fred King was a long paddle in, but it was a nice site and certainly was secluded. Snare Brook entered the cove just north of our campsite. Some dark clouds were rolling in as we arrived at Fred King. The first thing I did was find the privy. On my way I scared a fox from his hiding place in the rain. I went straight to setting up camp. Right after I had the rain fly attached to the tent (Dana was fetching firewood) the rain began. `I quickly put the lids back on the toes, they them and the sleeping gear in the tent, and stuffed miscellaneous items into bags. Dana came rushing back with some wood and we quickly put our large tarp over the campsite. When we got situated we each showered in the water pouring off the corners of our tarp. It was nice to be clean.

Before we set up camp, we had been looking for a good spot to put the tent. There were roots and lumps all over the ground, so we were bad and did some fir tipping and collected fir boughs in hopes of evening out the ground. We had a nice fire ate supper and went to bed at around 9:30.