Day 112 Eastport - Addison Maine

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  Addison, Maine, United States
Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Day 112 Addison Maine USA

Today started a little earlier than usual, Why? Is the question. Well Basil the owner of the RV park had told us that yesterday whales were right in the water that the RV park overlooks, and they are there usually in the early morning, such as 6:30am, well the intrepid travellers are not going to miss this opportunity to view whales on our door step, so we were up and down at the waters edge by 6:30 - 6:45 am. No amount of searching with binoculars nor wishing it to be, encouraged to whales into our view, but we honestly were not to fussed, it would have been wonderful, but just to have the view and the water at a calm point for us to observe, was worth the effort.

We had breakfast and then chose a route to take us along the coast towards a couple of places we had read about in the information brochures from the information centre.

The roads are certainly not made for fast travel, being rather narrow but at least sealed, yet a lot of broken edges or waves in the road, made for a bit of a reminder of the Yukon Alcan trip.

Never mind we managed to negotiate our way around to small fishing villages, and stopped at a small place called Lubic, for morning tea.

We walked out towards the water where we had observed the water running extremely fast, as the tide was receding, creating a current of approximately 20 knots, (according to our brochures)

At this point, we also spoke to a woman on a rock jetty out in the water, where part of the rock break water was in the USA and the border marker for Canada was on one of the Sandstone rocks we walked along. There is a bridge linking the island called Campobello Island, this island is Canadian owned and a deal apparently was done some time back to swap Eastport (the place we stayed at last night) with this Island, it has a summer residence that belonged to President Roosevelt and is now a park but belongs to Canada, we chose not to cross this bridge, simply because we are a little tired of the border crossings, so we observed it from the USA.

The woman also pointed out some seals (around 4 ) fishing in the fast moving current just out from us, obviously have fun and feeding well.

This woman had been in this small village for around 5 years, she came from Chicago to nurse her mother 5 years ago and when she passed on she had to nurse her father through Alzheimer's, and is now in the process of attempting to sell the two houses her parents owned.

She pointed one out to us, this was a B&B and is three levels with large areas, and is overlooking the harbour we were admiring and enjoying. The view is a 10 million dollar view and unable to be blocked, The asking price is $300,000. No kidding! If this house was anywhere else but in Lubic, Maine it would be at least $1mil or more.

The fact is, not a lot to do here and no real employment unless you are a lobster fisherman, and the winters would nail you. But as a summer retreat, all we can say is WOW!

We left this rock wall to head to look at a beach the woman described to us, (just around the corner) where, as she described, probably the only beach in the USA where you can walk or run along and be the only person on the beach. She was right when we found it we became three people on this beach, mind you the tide was low and it had a lot of muddy gravel or rough sand interspersed between us and the water at that point.

We left this little Time trapped Fishing village to travel to Quoddy headland, this has a Candy striped Lighthouse that has been restored and maintained by volunteers.

Before heading that way we decided to head to Pembroke (we were going through that way any way) to check out the red sand beaches, the brochures suggested that there are three distinct coloured sands within the 40 mile stretch along the shore line, Red beach sands near Pembroke, then some black volcanic sands , followed by Dazzling white sands near Machias.

We drove back through Pembroke to find ourselves circle off the highway 1 and back onto it. We are still looking for a place to actually get near the water yet alone see the red sand. We also point out we are still looking for the black volcanic sand and we are overlooking a river in the Machias section and no white sand. So we figure we must have missed something three times!

We travelled to the Candy striped light house from Pembroke, to look out over some high banks across to an island that belongs to Canada.

From this historic Lighthouse we headed further South, we came across more fishing villages, it is obvious the main occupation around here is Lobster fishing, the houses or places have stacks of lobster pots beside them. We went into a place called Jonesport and across another bridge onto Beal Island, (USA this one) The height of the buildings on piles in and around the water is amazing, they are built to cope with the tide fluctuations of an average of 18 ft and sometimes up to 28ft. We have taken some photos and when time permits will post them. Be assured it is a sight we will carry along with us. Amazing to see jetties and buildings built on such high piles. Boats everywhere, lobster pots everywhere.

We also mention here that Maine supplies 90% of this countries blueberries, and they grow seemingly wild along barren tracts of land, they are harvested in August by both mechanical means and Imported labour from India or Mexico, We stopped and of Course even though it had a sign "no Trespassing" one of our travellers had to gather a handful of blueberries, Just because he could! No prizes in guessing which traveller, sorry! They suggest they grow wild but in fact the land is owned (information gathered from the rv park we are presently in.) and they are really looked after and cultivated, not so much as cultivated but tended and feed etc, and mostly now harvested by machines, we were fortunate enough to observe some areas where workers were gathering them by hand, using broad rake type of sweepers to gather the berries. We are sure the ones we gathered will taste really sweet on the breaky cereal tomorrow.

We have arrived at a small RV park (only 6 sites) and were welcomed by the owner (a Lobster fisherman and his wife own the park) it overlooks a small river and we have seated ourselves to observe the tide flow in again a long way and fast. The park is in a beautiful spot with grassed area, TV connection, Wifi, and phone connection if required, truly one of the best we have struck, we nearly didn't check it out, because only having 6 sites we thought, nah, but it was on the way through so let us have a look, again we are being looked after, the owner said a couple of people had not long moved on, we had the pick of two sites. We are overlooking the water with ample space and will not have our view blocked. How good it is to be "On the right side of the grass"

We would like to advise our followers of this travel journey, we have now visited San Diego in the Bottom South West of this country, then to Washington State the Western most point in the "Lower 48" to Whitehorse in Alaska and top of the World Road, north as well has having achieved the Eastern most point in the USA at Quoddy Head Light house. How great is that, we have in our sights Florida Quays, of course, we reckon we will achieve our coverage of USA before we leave, any bets?

Hope all are well, never mind folks "Down under" the winter is nearly over for you, we will return in time for the summer to enjoy that period with you.