Every year my cousin James and I do a week-long river trip; we’ve always done trips closer to where I live in Virginia. This year we wanted to do a trip closer to James in Maine, so we decided to do the Penobscot River from Mattaseunk Dam to Bangor.

We put in below Mattaseunk Dam on Sunday, June 30 and stayed at Tannery Row that night. We got a really late start waiting out a bad thunderstorm and had to paddle this section pretty quickly. We stayed at Medunkeunk Landing the next night, resupplied in Lincoln on Tuesday, and stayed at Mohawk that night.

On Wednesday, we portaged West Enfield Dam — that was the first time either of us ever had to portage and it went pretty well. We put in below the dam and paddled down to Howland and got food at the Handy Stop. We stayed at Nibezun that night; Nibezun was my favorite campsite of the trip. It had the best river bank access and the Nibezun Medicine Trail was interesting. We paddled from Nibezun to Old Town on July 4. We decided to stay at the Milford Motel and overeat at Pepper’s Landing that night; the walk back to the hotel was a long one.

We portaged Milford Dam the next morning and got into a completely different river. We managed to get through every rapid without a crash, but Basin Mills had us worried and Veazie almost flipped me. We intended on staying out another night either at Oak Glen or The Salmon Club, but with bad weather on the way we decided to cut it a day short. We called our ride and got out at the Brewer boat launch.

The whole trip took us six days and I think we did around 70 miles. It’s amazing to see how much it changes along the way and to think about how much it’s changed over time and see the remnants of the past along the way.

Thank you for your help and for all the PRPT has done to make this accessible!