Our Home for the Summer

We are back in our usual spot as this is our 6th year to be back at Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge.  We arrived early without notice.  Our plans were to stay in Scarborough, Maine for awhile, but with more bad weather on the way, we were just ready to get off the road and be settled for the summer.

Crossing into Maine over the Piscatiqua River on I 95, you soon see the moose warning signs.  We are headed toward Calais, Maine.

Monday morning, we checked in at the office and met with Bill Kolodnicki, the project leader for Moosehorn and Aroostook National Wildlife Refuges.  He brought us up to snuff on things.  First, he is getting married in June.  We wish them all the best!!!

Our official work days are Tuesday through Thursday, but already some Saturdays were thrown in as extras with the birding festival on the 25th-27th.  On the 24th, we have 70 plus kids coming and we will be helping Bill with that.  

We went right to work cleaning the YCC building.  Someone had shut off the fridge and it took some cleaning getting the mildew out of it.  The visitors cabin was in disarray, but it did not take me long to get it back in order.  

They broke ground on the new headquarters building, but it won't be finished until the fall after we have left for our next volunteer position in Louisiana.

This is a beautiful spot with great views and the plans are super.  It will be something for us to look forward to when we come back next summer.  

Pictures will be taken every day showing the progress.

They have been planning this for several years and it is finally coming to fruition.

Thursday afternoon, Bill asked if we would like to drive him over near Lubec for a meeting...drop him off and take a drive over to the Edmunds Unit to check on things over there while he was in the meeting.  We filled the kiosk with brochures and visited with some students from the University of Maine.

There are two divisions to this refuge.  The Baring Unit, consisting of 24,000 acres, where headquarters is located and where we are parked, and the Edmunds Unit, 8,800 acres with Cobscook State Park located on refuge property and leased to the state.  It takes about 45 minutes to travel between the two units.

By going back on our older posts for the summer of 2011, you can read and see some of the places we visited and some of the things we did while we were here then.  That is the year I started our blog.  We have some other new adventures coming up for this summer.

We are taking a nature walk on the Charlotte Trail tomorrow.  Would you like to go along?

Until next time...