Canoeing Trips in Maine with NEOC – Thoreau Themed Trips & Guided Trips
Just Add water! Here at the New England Outdoor Center, we love to see people getting onto the beautiful lakes and rivers in the area. Canoes are available for guest use on Millinocket Lake and guests enjoy paddling on the lake, along the shoreline, etc. If you are interested in a guided canoe trip – NEOC offers the following: This year – 2014 we are offering a range of trips on the East and West branch of the Penobscot River – these trips will retrace the routes traveled by David Henry Thoreau in the 1840’s and 1850’s. For these trips we will provide the Guide and the equipment. We will also help you design a custom trip for you and your group – please call with questions and to book. 800-766-7238
- Trip 1: We can customize a day trip for you based on Thoreau’s 1846 trip – contact us for to discuss details.
- Trip 2: is a is a day trip based on Thoreau’s 1846, canoeing with a guide along the West branch into Ambejejus lake.
Photo credit: Dennis Welsh for Katahdin Woods & Waters
- Trip 3: We can customize a multi-day trip for you including a hike up Katahdin or a paddle on the east or west branch of the Penobscot. Contact us to discuss details.
- Trip 4: is a guided overnight trip lasting 2 days – and involves canoeing the East Branch of the Penobscot along the trail Thoreau took in 1857 traveling through the Katahdin Woods and Waters.
- Trip 5: is a guided overnight trip lasting 3 days with 2 nights of camping along the East Branch, Hiking Deasey Mountain, canoeing, fishing and swimming along the route Thoreau took in 1857 through what is now known as The Katahdin Woods and Waters.
THOREAU DAY TRIPS WITH NEOC
TRIP 1:We can customize a day trip for you based on Thoreau’s 1846 trip – contact us for to discuss details.
Paddle the West branch of the Penobscot River with NEOC
“The forenoon was a serene and placid on this wild stream in the woods, as we are apt to imagine that Sunday in summer usually is in Massachusetts. We were occasionally startled by the scream of a bald eagle, sailing over the stream in front of our bateau; or fish hawks, on whom he levies his contributions” Henry David Thoreau
TRIP 2: Enjoy a paddling day trip & a visit to the Boom House, this trip is based on Thoreau’s 1846 September trip to The Maine Woods. Paddle the scenic West Branch of the Penobscot River putting in at Little or Big Omaha Beach into the Debsconeag Deadwater and paddling through Passamagamet Lake and into Ambajejus Lake. Lakeside Lunch is provided by the River Driver’s Restaurant on Millinocket Lake. This trip is guided by a registered Maine Guide and canoe equipment and gear are provided by NEOC. Canoe instruction can be provided also at the start of the trip if necessary. Cost $119/per person, 4 person minimum.
“Ambejijis, this quiet Sunday morning struck me as the most beautiful lake we had seen. It is said to be one of the deepest. We had the fairest view of Joe Merry, Double Top and Ktaadn, from its surface. The summit of the latter had a singularly flat, table land appearance, like a short highway, where a demigod might be let down to take a turn or two in an afternoon, to settle his dinner… Our breakfast consisted of tea, with hard bread and pork and fried salmon, which we ate with forks neatly whittled from Adler-twigs, which grew there, off strips of Birch-bark for plates.”
OVERNIGHT GUIDED THOREAU TRIPS WITH NEOC – SUMMER
TRIP 3: We can customize a multi-day trip for you including a hike up Katahdin or a paddle on the east or west branch of the Penobscot. Contact us to discuss details.
Photo credit: Dennis Welsh for Katahdin Woods & Waters
TRIP 4: Retrace part of Henry David Thoreau’s journey from July 30th to August 1st 1857 on the East Branch of the Penobscot River through the Katahdin Woods & Waters. This trip includes two Days Paddling with One Night camping on the East Branch of the Penobscot River with a registered Maine guide. Canoe & camping equipment and food for guests is included for this trip. Cost is $399 per person, four person minimum.
Photo credit: Dennis Welsh for Katahdin Woods & Waters
Figure 3: Photo Credit Dennis Welsh – KWWP
Day 1: Put-in: The put in is at the historic Bowlin Camps on the East branch of the Penobscot and paddle to south of Lunksoos Camps (approximately 12 mile paddle). Camp at Big Sebois campsite which is North of Lunksoos just below the confluence of the Sebois and East Branch.
“It was an interesting spot, where the river began to make a great bend to the east, and the last of the particular moose-faced Nerlumskeechticook Mountains not far southwest of Grand Lake [Matagamon] rose dark in the northwest a short distance behind, displaying its gray precipitous southeast side…”
Day 2: Paddle the scenic East Branch from the Big Sebois Campsite to the take out take out at Grindstone Falls (17 mile paddle). Stop by the location of Thoreaus’ Tea Berry camp where the Wassataquoik enters the East Branch.
“I also heard the sound of bull-frogs from a swamp on the opposite side, thinking at first they were moose; a duck paddled swiftly by; and sitting in that dusky wilderness, under that dark mountain, by the bright river which was full of reflected light, still I heard the wood thrush sing, as if no other civilization could be attained…then at night the general stillness is more impressive than any sound, but occasionally you hear the note of an owl farther or nearer in the woods, and if near a lake, the semi human cry of the loons at their unearthly revels”
TRIP 5: Henry David Thoreau journeyed on the East Branch of the Penobscot River in July and August 1857. Retrace his step along the East Branch through The Katahdin Woods & Waters: 2 NIGHTS CAMPING, paddling, hiking, fishing and camping with a registered Maine Guide. Canoe, camping equipment and food for guests is included in this trip. Cost is $198 per person per day, four person minimum.
Day 1: 5pm Start: The put in is at the historic Bowlin Camps on the East branch of the Penobscot, paddle 2-3 miles, camp overnight at a campsite close to Little Spring Brook Mountain. At night enjoy a traditional campfire dinner with time in the evening and morning for fishing and swimming.
Photo credit: Dennis Welsh for Katahdin Woods & Waters
“…A red headed woodpecker flew across the river, and the Indian remarked that it was good to eat. As we glided swiftly down the inclined plane of the river a great cat-owl launched itself away from a stump on the bank, and flew heavily across the stream…soon afterward a white headed eagle sailed down the stream before us”
“In the morning after whetting our appetite on some raw pork, a wafer of hard bread and a dipper of condensed cloud or waterspout…I climbed alone over huge rocks, loosely poised, a mile or more, still edging toward the clouds; for though the day was clear elsewhere, the summit was concealed by mist. The mountain seemed a vast aggregation of loose rocks, as if sometime it had rained rocks, and they lay as they fell on the mountain sides…They were the raw materials of a planet dropped from an unseen quarry, which the vast chemistry of nature would anon work up, or work down, into the smiling and verdant plants and valleys of earth. This was an undone extremity of the globe; as in Lignite, we see coal in the process of formation…The tops of mountains are among the unfinished parts of the globe, whither it is a slight insult to the Gods to climb and pry into their secrets and try their effect on our humanity. Only daring and insolent men, perchance go there. Simple races as savages do not climb mountains – their tops are sacred and mysterious tracts never visited by them.”