Finally Ours - The Dream Begins

Friday, December 29, 2017

The four of us - R, me, Tyson, and Willow - awoke at 2 a.m. with excitement in our hearts and sleep still tugging at our eyes.  Tyson and Willow could feel the anxious energy and waited with their own anticipation as R & I packed our bags into the truck.  It was a 4 1/2 hour drive to Treworgy & Baldacci, real estate closing services, in Bangor who would be handling the purchase.

Tyson and Willow do extraordinarily well in the vehicles.  We take them when we go crawling off-road in the trails with our lifted 4x4 Tacoma, and we take them on hikes, too.  We traveled hundreds of miles when we brought them each home into our family.  Tyson came from western New York; Willow from northern Vermont.

Tyson, naturally, gets out and does his doodie at the appropriate pit stops.  I have a 13x9 tupperware container with a lid that Willow uses as a litter box when she can't find a good spot in the wood chips or grass.  She's pretty good at using the stops to relieve herself, and will give us subtle clues if she has to go sooner.

We arrived at the lawyer's office on time and everyone was present.  Bing-bang-boom, a few signatures later and they keys to the camper are in our hands!  Afraid to be excited because it seems too surreal, we head northwest from Bangor to our new land.

By this time of the year there is already some snow on the ground.  It was winter, cold, and the camp is not set up for habitation, in addition to the fact that our truck's four wheel drive function was broken so even though there was not a whole lot of snow on the ground, the truck would not make it the two miles in to camp on an unplowed road.  So making the best of it, we rented a room at a nearby motor lodge that accepted pets, with plans to spend the new year exploring our new town.

Willow naps in her carrier at the motor lodge

We drove around town getting ourselves acclimated with the area, talked to locals, had meals at some local hot spots.  Everyone was very friendly.  Much to our delight, we learned that 2.5 miles away is access to Maine's Interconnected Trail System (ITS), which has thousands of miles of snowmobile/ATV trails - some that go in to Canada!

It turns out that our new land, while very isolated and situated 2 miles down an unmaintained town road with the nearest neighbor a mile away, is actually only about a 10 minute ride from the end of our road to gas stations, grocery stores, Dunkin Donuts, Ace Hardware, local eateries - most anything we'll ever need.  There is even a hospital and a vet within 20 minutes.

We have so many good feelings about this place!!!