(In the following blog, guide Matt Burnett writes about his adventures on the Allagash River in July 2026 with the Northern Forest Explorers, a canoe-camping program that takes youth aged 8-14 years on 5-day camping trips in New York and Maine. You can read Part 1 here.)
By Matt Burnett
By and large we got into a groove that continued through most of the trip. With no significant weather events after the initial storm, we made great time most days and had a fun run at Chase Rapids with the empty boats. Lo and me, plus Kurt and Heidi, were the only swimmers.
One good burn (a marshmallow incident) required me to apply daily dressings on Wren’s wrist (luckily on the back of the hand and not the front). Benji, who had early on received the enigmatic moniker, “Strawberry,” had a strange swelling around one eye and then both. In his mellow, undramatic way, he said that he had “swam into a rock,” which didn’t quite add up to me but seemed to be the truth. In any case, he greeted us in the morning looking like Sylvester Stallone at the end of Rocky, and then by mid-morning the puffiness went down. It was fairly baffling.
Meanwhile, a raging chess tournament had taken off amongst all of our participants. I was in my glory, though as trip leader I only got an occasional game. Apparently, the camp myth was that as a 1,200-plus rating chess player everyone thought I was “unbeatable.” But that idea was destroyed by the wiles of Lo, master of hot sauce, 2x swimmer on Chase rapids. Lo is legendary, one of the nicest kids you ever want to meet, and can put on a “begging mode” that would outshine our family dog, especially when there is candy involved.
Janne had a nice trout right off of the shore at Jaws campsite.
Turning Point
A big turning point in the trip came when we left Chissom Brook campsite with a fairly open goal for how far we would go that day. We had had a fun night of dutch oven cooking with do-it-yourself calzones and a singed pineapple cake for Heidi, who had turned 13 on the trip. Now we were ready to put on some miles.
By the time we made Long Lake dam (a quick up and over of a carry), we had a quandary: it was 3 p.m. and the kids had lots of energy to spend.
The carry campsite was not calling us so we set our sights on Round Lake, which was still hours of paddling away.
This segment turned out to be one of the most challenging paddles of the trip, with a big deadwater section that pulled our arms and our morale down, and a destination that would just not turn up.
We finally rolled out on Round Lake around 7:30 p.m. with a beautiful setting sun and several booked-up campsites. When your group is tired, when the day is running out and you just need to land, it is hard to double around the lake in the search for open sites.
We finally found a tight but welcome spot at the firetower trail. With the sun setting, we put together camp and ate Scott’s pesto meal. The promise of sleeping late and an easy day in the morning settled in, and everybody crashed hard.
With everybody tucked into their tents, Scott and I put away dishes in the dark and watched fireflies with a cup of herbal tea.
We woke up slowly with the idea of “no rushing today.” Janne looked at her father’s silent tent and said, “I think you killed, dad. He’s never not up before us.” But we were all mistaken! When she finally looked into the tent, it turned out to be empty. He had risen with the sun to do the 5 mile to and back hike to the fire tower. Kurt is an ANIMAL, and we did not follow in his footsteps.
In fact, we all decided that a leisurely move would be desirable, and so we made our way to the next place, one of the Five Fingers campsites. This turned out to be a good swimming and fishing spot, and so we ended up taking our siesta day the following day at this more desirable place. We worked on some fly fishing, the chess tournament progressed, and a big “Capture the Flag” game was ongoing. It was so nice to rest and just take it in, and to watch our campers doing the same.
Unstructured time can be so freeing, especially after you’ve earned it with physical activity, and there are no media moguls to steal it away from you. I’ve now gotten to witness many years of this transformation, and it is rare that I have to insert structure into this open time. To hear everybody laughing, running around, and getting along, is music to my ears. The tonic of nature, indeed.
Last Night
As it turned out, we spent our last night about 5-8 miles downstream. On the way, we saw a moose crossing the river, which was about the fifth of this trip.
Dinner ended up being a smorgasbord. We had pork loins, macaroni and cheese, a leftover pizza, and all the candy that we could fit into the situation. Everything must go!
Scott had kept ice until about a day or two earlier. Through careful packing and limited access, all of the cold stuff had survived the trip.
Lo replayed me at chess and it ended in a draw, essentially sealing that his first win had not been a fluke.
Our last few miles were quiet and beautiful, a gentle morning ride on the river that had seen us so far into northern Maine. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry to leave, it had been a great trip. Our people were waiting for us at the takeout, so by noon Scott and I were back in our truck and looking for a greasy spoon diner.
Bottom line: The Twin Rivers Lunch is fun, friendly and filling. And they have a life size Betty Boop!
My only consternation was the brand-new canoe rack on my truck. It had been giving me trouble right from the start. One section kept coming unclipped from the truck. Although because I was tied down at the bow and stern, the boats had made it alright.
During the ferry from the start of our paddle to the end, it had apparently malfunctioned and the rear section had fallen off the truck. The ferry driver had saved it but not the cleat that it sits upon, so it became an engineering problem of a few hours to get this improvised with an old engine belt and by futzing and adjusting again and again.
My jury rig had to make it all the way back to New York with two plastic boats, afterall.
Scott and I took another day to do some trout fishing in Falls Brook Lake. That is a story that will have to go in a different blog, but the upshot is, when we come together, things happen, just like they always did. Let’s keep making them happen, brother!
