Maine Coast

We made it to Maine-only two more states to check off Judy's list. We traveled up the coast of Maine, which is mainly peninsulas and tidal inlets, so it would be better to be a bird or a fish.  We travelled on route 1 that takes you from town to town with lots of old houses and inns and forests and some bare ground that is actually blueberry bushes.  We stopped at Boothbay Harbor for lunch and ate at a tugboat restaurant with a nice view of the bay.  

The tide along main increases from 6-8 feet at Portsmouth to 8-10 at Acadia- and as we go north into New Brunswick and Nova Scotia it will be really high 30-40 feet.  There is an interesting mix of tidal inlets with wetlands and then narrow glacial lakes- with no tide.  All carved by the glaciers. The towns all seem to be very old with wooden victorian or older- and their spring flowers are lovely. But it takes a while to make it from town to town.  My favorite was Camden- the downtown buildings have all been restored as nice shops- and the Camden River flows through town under the stores and a 30-feet cascade drops to the bay.

I bought a National Park Pass for seniors at the Lowell Museum and now we get into National Park places (monuments and historical sites) for cheap and free.  I'm loving it (being 62).   So we got into Acadia National Park for-right free.  Whooppee!!!  We are at Acadia National Park- this is the greenery and peninsulas and glacial fjords and tidal inlets and lakes that she is describing.  It is very beautiful on  a sunny day like today, but we wonder what it is like in the winter (most of the year). We took a tourist trolley to the top of Cadillac Mountain so I could look around without crashing or driving off the road.  They call it a mountain but it's just 1500 feet tall. Seriously? Mt. Whitney is 14,505' and I climbed it- Judy.

We had lunch in the tourist (resort) town of Bar Harbor, and later walked in the woods.  John D Rockefeller had a lot to do with donating land for the park.  One interesting project was to construct 65 miles of gravel carriage roads and stone bridges; with gate houses so that no automobiles could spoil the beauty.  Cars were allowed on other roads that cross over the gravel carriage roads.  These now are the major walking, biking, and hiking routes through the woods and up the small hills.  This is just like our logging roads that give us such good access to our land!

For lunch we tried to stop at the Jordan Pond House, which was a restaurant established in 1890 for rich families with summer mansions on the island- that became famous for its turnovers with butter and strawberry jam; but we circled both parking lots twice and finally gave up.  But after our walk in the woods later in the day we took the loop road along the coast and this led us back to the Jordan Pond House.  It is now a modern wood lodge with windows looking out over the long lake surrounded by trees and hills (they say mountains).  For dinner the tables were set with linen and beautiful dishes- we bet the lunch scene was a mob so the dinner was certainly the best time to go.  We had a wonderful 40th anniversary dinner (we still have 12 more to go on our trip).  I don't think I can keep eating like this-Judy.  A turnover for rolls and a turnover with ice cream for dessert.  This was a really nice ending to our day at Acadia.