Road Trip to Maine - 2017

Baltimore Maryland to Lubec Maine

--Blogpost written by Bob

After dropping off our two cats at the Pet Boarding Resort at 7:30 AM we hit the road for Maine.  We drove around Baltimore and northward through Pennsylvania and into the state of New York, completely bypassing New Jersey and New York City.  We experienced several delays due to rush hour traffic (around Baltimore), an accident or two, and road construction.  We finally reached Freeport Maine at about 8 PM on Monday evening, July 24.  The outside temperature when we arrived in Maine was in the high 50's--quite a change from the heat and humidity of Baltimore!  After the exhausting travel day, we had no problem sleeping in our hotel bed through the night.

In the morning, we went into Freeport, had breakfast, and went into the large L.L.Bean store which is open 24 hours a day.  We also shopped in the Patagonia store and the J. Crew outlet store but the best of all was the Sperry outlet store--we both bought new boat shoes.  After a nice lunch in town we left for Bar Harbor via Route 1 (the coastal highway).  Our 1950's vintage motel (my mistake in selecting lodging!) was a few miles outside Bar Harbor.  We drove into Bar Harbor after checking in to pick up a bottle of vodka and were amazed by the crowds of tourists--Bar Harbor is certainly not a sleepy little coastal town as I previously thought it was.

The harbor at Bar Harbor, Maine.

Wednesday morning after breakfast we drove into Acadia National Park and followed Park Loop Road around most of the individual attractions. 

A very typical view along the shore of Acadia National Park

The park was extremely crowded and most of the designated parking areas were full.  In some places parking along the road was allowed--in other places we had to wait for a parking space to open up. 

Another view of the rugged coastline.

As you can see by some of the photos included in this blog post, the views were absolutely awesome!

Looking down one of the steep rocky cliffs into the sea.

We ended our driving tour at the top of Cadillac Mountain, the highest mountain on the east coast of the U.S.

The view from the top of Cadillac Mountain, the highest
mountain on the eastern seaboard of the U.S.

On Thursday morning, we drove to Lubec (pronounced loo-BECK with the emphasis on the last syllable)--it took about 3 hours.  Lubec is a small town with a population of under 1500 people and is the easternmost town in the U.S.--it is right across the border from Canada.  We are staying in a hotel (Inn on the Wharf) which was a sardine plant at one time and it has about 23 rooms, I say "about" because the woman at the desk had a hard time figuring this out.  Our room has a balcony that overlooks the harbor.

This is the view from our hotel room balcony.  The land you 
see in the background is Canada.

The harbor at Lubec only has a dozen or so boats on moorings.
It was quite foggy when we arrived.

Soon after we arrived we had lunch in the restaurant on the hotel's premises, a delicious lobster stew!  We made reservations earlier in the week for a whale watching tour today but it was foggy and a few other people cancelled.  So, we made the decision to stay here another night (cancelling our hotel in Belfast) and go whale watching tomorrow.  After lunch we drove to West Quoddy Head Lighthouse, about 5 miles away from our hotel.  According to Wikipedia, "Since 1808, there has been  a lighthouse at this location to guide ships through the Quoddy Narrows.  The current Lighthouse, with distinctive red-and-white stripes, was built in 1858, and is still an active aid to navigation."

The East Quoddy Head Lighthouse is surrounded by a 525-acre
heavily wooded park which contains a rocky shoreline.

Some of the rocky shoreline surrounding the lighthouse.

A moss grows on the trees near the shore--it must derive its moisture
from the fog along the shoreline.  This looks very much
like Spanish Moss in the South.

Since we are about half way through our Maine road trip, we will end this blogpost here in Lubec Maine.  Stay tuned for the results of our whale watching tour tomorrow...

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