Baxter State Park
Maine
August 2012
We cross the Park boundary and continue to wind through the woods, passing the Visitors Center and pulling up at the southern entrance, the Togue Pond Gatehouse. And now we sit. Our first significant Maine traffic jam. There are five cars in front of us. What an enormous crowd, actually taking two rangers to check us in.
It is here that we meet Ranger Tom. We are now the second car in line and in the name of efficiency, while another ranger is dealing with the car in front of us, Ranger Tom comes trotting back to our car. “Hello!”
“Hello back. We’re here to do some hiking. We’ve got reservations.”
R T says, “Good for you. Do you have a Maine driver’s license or serve in the military?”
“Nope on both counts.”
“Then it’s fourteen dollars to get in to the Park. Or,” he offers, “you can join the army three squares see the world. Most people go with the fourteen bucks.”
“Wait a minute,” I say. “We paid for reservations, right? Why do we have to pay again?”
“When you made the reservations, you paid the campsite fee. The fourteen dollars is a separate entrance fee. All of it goes to maintenance of the Park.
“Unless you’d like to join the military,” he adds.
Sensing that this is a dead end, he adds, Do you have any pets with you?”
Lisa says we don’t. I say, “Hey, I thought I was your pet.”
Tom says, “She can call you her pet if she wants to, but pets can’t stay in the Park. And you are definitely not staying here tonight with me!”
We pay our fourteen bucks, Ranger Tom waves us through and we drive on to camp.
