I suspect there are a few stretches of highway in Maine dubbed "Moose Alley." But the one I'm most familiar with is Route 201 from Bingham to Jackman, where the moose population seems as thick as the black flies.

I don't know the stats, but I can tell you from personal experience cruising up there countless trips for rafting or kayaking, it's a pretty scary road to drive sometimes, most especially at night, when the big animals are nearly impossible to see until you are right on top of them... or they're on top of you!

A particularly bad section is the couple of miles between Northern Outdoors and Three Rivers Whitewater in The Forks.

And that's where an out-of-state couple had a serious run-in with a moose on Saturday night. It would appear that their car was totaled in the accident but the two survived with only minor injuries. Lucky them.

And as often happens, the moose fled the scene, a scenario I've witnessed a number of times. I just don't know how a moose can do that, but they do.

I'll never forget arriving first on the scene of a horrific looking accident on I-95 in Gardiner one summer day while returning home from Baxter Park. A family in a minivan struck a moose, flipped end over end, ejecting everybody. The minivan was flattened to the height of about four feet. Incredibly, no one was seriously injured. But the moose was crumpled in the middle of the highway, apparently dead.

So while my friend, an EMT, attended to medical needs of the family, I directed traffic around the moose until emergency help could arrive. But I surely wasn't prepared for what happened next.

As I stood there waving cars by, I watched in stunned amazement as the moose slowly stood up, shook itself off, and sauntered into the woods!

I couldn't believe it. But I've seen it happen several times since.

Moose collisions are scary. And ugly. And very often deadly.

That's why I make it a point not to travel in known heavy moose corridors at night if I can at all avoid it. Like Route 201. I feel much better getting to camp early, in the daylight, while I can still see the mooses.

Have you had any close calls with moose on the road?