Southward toward St. Andrews, I stopped for a while to see the falls at the town of St. George, in the Magaguadavic Gorge, a thin chasm where a tall fish ladder had been constructed to aid salmon in their spawning.
One of the great mysteries to me is the Canadian fascination with donuts. Traveling throughout Ontario years ago, I couldn’t help but notice the profusion of donut shops that far outnumbered fast food franchises, convenience stores, even gas stations, in the commercial Toronto suburb of Mississauga and elsewhere. Seen from the air, the Tim Horton’s outside of St.George would have looked like some celestial pod whose gravitational pull proved impossible to resist. Cars from all directions docked in the parking spaces that surrounded the building and customers ordered donuts by the dozens. Even on this relatively busy stretch of Route 1, it was the only thing around. The bagel I ordered was all the evidence I needed that Horton’s specializes in donuts. CBC Radio, broadcasts that I grew up with in Detroit, certainly made up for the mediocre breakfast. I pulled back on to the highway with the Mozart Clarinet Concerto.
I had forgotten how wonderful CBC was and it was a pleasant surprise to hear the voice of David Wisdom a few days earlier when first arriving in Nova Scotia. Rumored to have the largest record collection in the world – certainly the most eclectic - he has consistently been mixing a great assortment of music now for perhaps twenty years. Delaying my departure from Canada, I rode down the slender peninsula to the resort town of St. Andrews on the Passamaquoddy Bay. Settled by Loyalists in 1783, St. Andrews’ first colonists came from colonies much further south and had moved to what they thought was Canada, at Castine, Maine. An international boundary decision forced the group to move, and they placed their houses and belongings on barges and settled here. The town was wallowing in the morning sun when I arrived, and the tourists were wallowing in the shops and the stalls at the craft fair near the marina. The town today maintains a real historic charm – most of the buildings are of wood construction and date back 100 years or more. It wouldn’t look out of place in Virginia. I left busy Water Street and headed away from the quay to where one street boasts seven churches, all side by side and all of them wood. The alabaster-colored spire of Christchurch dominates the skyline but I found the carpenter-gothic style of the United Church to particularly fascinating. I stayed to watch the yachts bob up and down in the high tide and wished to come back to visit the islands of Deer (largest tidal whirlpool in the Western hemisphere), Campobello (vacation home of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and where the former president learned of his polio), and Grand Manan (southernmost and pounded by violent tides). Nearby Black’s Harbor was hosting the North American Sardine Packing Championship and I wondered how one qualifies for such an event.
St. Stephen’s (“chocolate capital of New Brunswick”) is situated on the north bank of the St. Croix River and the U.S. frontier. In 1604, a French exploration party led by Samuel de Champlain, settled on Doucet Island near the river’s mouth, rejecting St. John further north as unsuitable for settlement. The decision nearly cost the party its life; hunger and scurvy claimed 35 lives in the frigid winter of 1605-06. When the weather warmed, they crossed to the Nova Scotia side of Fundy, establishing Port Royal as the center of French Acadia. I passed through a thorough border inspection at Calais and crossed into Maine; a few miles further on, a sign invited golfers to hit the links at the easternmost golf course in the United States.
The wide swaths of forest that I had crossed throughout New Brunswick gave way to a profusion of small and charming towns along the Maine coast, one being Perry, at the 45th parallel, halfway between the Equator and the North Pole. The sun was glinting off the glimpses of sea beside the road, making the wave ripples in the deep inlets look like shiny fish scales. I was taking the longest, slowest route across Maine but it felt wonderful in this tailor-made traveling weather. One quarter down the world, I had found the ideal climate.
As the dense forest stands began to recede I still kept an eye out for moose, especially in the boggy clearings where rivers struggled to reach the sea. I circled giant Cobscook Bay and entered blueberry country, where bushy fields pushed up to the sides of the road. Attractive Machias, crowned by an impressive tall church, is the center of blueberry country in Maine; nearby Machiasport was the scene of the first naval battle of the Revolution. This was an extremely enjoyable drive, the forests, lakes and jagged bays peppered with attractive Downeast towns: Harrington. Milbridge. Steuben.
I had planned to take my lunch beside the sea and found the ideal opportunity at Schoodic Peninsula, the only portion of Acadia National Park on the mainland. I headed south down the peninsula to the town of Winter Harbor, its several fishing boats in a broad but sheltered bay, and drove into the park to land’s end. There, giant granite blocks meet the sea where waves thunder against the bases. Several people were sunbathing and I enjoyed a sandwich as gulls eyed my crumbs and boats circled the peninsula, close enough to throw a stone and hit, the lobstermen emptying their traps. Mt. Desert Island loomed in the not-too-distant distance, just across winding Frenchman Bay, drawing to it the one and only cloud in the sky.
It was difficult to tell the difference between lake and bay, and in most cases I’m certain that fresh and saltwaters mixed. I passed through more blueberry fields, cranberry bogs and dense woods pressed up to lakes/bays. Ellsworth is the largest town on this part of the coast and I found it busy at midday, tourists ducking in and out of its many shops. At Bucksport, another sizable town, I crossed the bridge that spans the broad Penobscot River as it enters the bay of the same name; from its tall span the view of the town was spectacular. Motels and lodges had started popping up here; thirty or so miles back I had marveled at the absence of accommodations. Route 1 curved to follow the long, western edge of the bay and the islands were too numerous to count.
Maine is both the 39th largest state in land area and the 39th most populous. Most of its 1.2 million people – outside of Augusta, Waterville and Bangor – can be found along the coast. That said, other than Portland, few cities of any size can be found here. South of Camden, I found a sign in every other yard that pleaded. “Stop the Widening”. The rest of the yards argued that, “Widening Route 1 is Essential”. A few miles further on I came to a halt where a large steamshovel was breaking concrete and a wider trench was being dug. It appeared that either increased population or summer visitors made necessary the expansion of Route 1’s single lane. The opponents had lost.
I crossed over Damariscotta Lake and entered Maine’s popular Boothbay Region. Another awesome span connected the banks of the Kennebec River where three massive freighters were taking on cargo in the Bath shipyard, the first I had seen since St. John. I met up with I-95 again, sad that I had to leave the slow and pleasant state road. But it was getting late; I had been driving for 10 hours and was looking forward to some kip.
Reaching Route 1 again at Kennebunk. Adjacent Kennebunkport is known to most Americans, if at all, as the summer home of George Herbert Walker Bush. The road here is strung with hotels, motels and restaurants all the way to the New Hampshire border; on the border of Wells and Ogunquit, I found a motel room with just enough space to pitch my tent for the evening to dry it out. A bed sounded heavenly. These beach communities were filled with sunburned Bostonians and looked quite prosperous. Next door, the Aran Pub and Restaurant beckoned like a motioning hand; I read the paper and savored a pint. The ostentatious luxury of cable TV had me stay up half the night, toggling between the first NFL game of the season and VH1’s Behind the Music featuring Aerosmith. My neck sore from watching TV in bed, it was the worst night of sleep I had.
