So, my Husband is a Man-Child. 
I say this from a place of love, (and even he can’t deny it) he is a 12 year old trapped in an almost 30 year old body. And why would I begin a Monday morning by calling out my beloved? Because this weekend we went on a 6 hour off-roading adventure in the hopes of spotting a Moose.

From the SECOND we found out we were even maybe moving to Maine, Justin has wanted/needed/been obsessed with seeing a Moose (Moose should be capitalized, for sure). He has told every single person we meet in Maine that he wants to see (and/or hunt) a Moose. These innocent bystanders kindly discuss all things Moose with him….but you can tell they think he’s a little nutty. 
And then Mark moved in. 
Now I have two Man-Children to contend with. They fan each other’s Moose flames and the next thing you know, the three of us have loaded up the dog, our Bean Boots, a monogrammed pink ikat print cooler full of snacks and piled into my SUV. 
Our painter Norman is a true Mainer, born and bred here in Northern Maine, and he suggested that we head out to a very remote part of a nature preserve to an untamed area called Deer Lake. His directions went a little something like this:
Take the 2nd wooden bridge
(or maybe it’s the 3rd…)
Look for a sign on a tree that could be either on the right or the left
Turn right onto the dirt road – it’s a well maintained dirt road – so don’t turn on a rough one
Drive for many miles…
(good luck)
He did kindly warn us to make sure we had a full tank of gas before we left (or we’d be screwed).
Ya’ll, we would be fools to call this an “adventure”….more like “survival skills training 101”
We saw ONE other car in a span of 4 hours of off-roading (and 4 ATVs).
Maybe a visual will help:
Please note the “well maintained” dirt road
At some point I realized that not only were we miles from a AAA Emergency Vehicle, but we were so far off the grid that we didn’t even have the cell service to call AAA if we needed them. Justin and Mark were thrilled to be so far out in No Man’s Land. I was secretly a nervous wreck….especially as we went from dirt road to loose gravel to straight up rocks and boulders in the road-like area. 
(Justin was literally evil laughing as we bounced over boulder roads and Mark was in the back yelling “WOOOO!” every time we cannon balled through a puddle…boys are idiots.)
Despite my secret anxiety, I had to keep it together because obviously this was no place for girly nerves!
We were on a Moose Mission.
(I had clearly lost the boys to their Nature Buzz…reason, safety and sanity went out the window somewhere between the first bridge made of packing crates and the loss of cell service.)

 Every time we passed a low lying area with water Justin would slam on the brakes and then creep slowly through in case a Moose was grazing near by (do Moose graze? I have no idea, that just sounded good). I secretly thought it was really funny that he insisted to creep so slowly and quietly…as if the potential Moose might not notice a bright, baby blue SUV slowly rolling past their watering hole.

Moose-less foliage
At some point, Mark was kind enough to point out that he had found our relative location on Satellite and we were so far away from any type of main road that he couldn’t even see one on the map. The boys high-fived, giddy with their Nature Buzz…I cried silently to myself. 
Believe it or not, and against all odds, we made our way to Deer Lake… and it was absolutely beautiful. Even to a non-nature loving, bug hating, girly girl, it was obvious that we had hit the Nature Jack Pot. Deer Lake is the clearest lake I have ever laid eyes on. The pics don’t do it justice because it just looks brown…what you can’t see is the crushed rock bottom is brown and you are seeing straight down through the clear water. Mark immediate jumped in, fully clothed. (Man-Child) I wish I had pictures of his face when he realized that he didn’t have any clothes to ride home in…

No filter, no effects…
We may have the only Lab mix on Earth who doesn’t like to swim…despite Justin tossing her in a few times…Macie hated us/Deer Lake. She refused pics, she’s such a diva.
Sadly, despite our best efforts to flush them out, there were no Moose at Deer Lake. 
The boys had not lost hope – after we had our fill of Deer Lake, we attempted to get back to a real road a different way than we took into Nature Land in the hopes of finding Moosey areas. 
We were treated to some of Maine’s finest landscape
No filter…can you spot the Eagle’s Nest? Dad, I know you are so proud of me right now.
But, sadly, no Moose.
As it often happens, the Adventure turned out to be in the getting there…not in the Moose sightings…and that is really the saddest of all for me, because the Moose Hunt is still on. Every clump of trees we drive by, every drainage pond, every stump shaped like an animal will continue to result in Justin throwing a U Turn or a straight up reverse (Gone In Sixty Seconds Style, except in my Mercury Mariner, so not nearly as cool) to get back to the potential Moose Lands.
Don’t worry, the second we spot one, ya’ll will be the first to know. Aren’t you just thrilled?! 
Yeah, me too.
xox
S