Machias, Maine - As of this morning, I am officially winging it. After two months of generally following a route meticulously laid out in Adventure Cycling maps, I am now trying to navigate my way to and through Nova Scotia using nothing but what I can get from tourist boards, chambers of commerce and AAA.
This, as it turns out, is harder than it might sound. The Adventure Cycling maps mostly did a great job of finding local secondary roads with big shoulders and little traffic. Now, finding those roads has become more of a guessing game, as has finding campgrounds, grocery stores and libraries. Obviously I'm doing all right, though, at least on the last count.
After polishing off the coast-to-coast route, I spent two days in Bar Harbor exploring Acadia National Park by bike and foot. And as much as Bar Harbor is a hellish tourist madhouse this time of year, I must admit I had a good time there and in the park. (Well, mostly in the park.) Acadia is beautiful in a sort of low-key weathered granite sort of way, with the park anchored around a series of low mountains, ragged coastal cliffs and hidden lakes. They've also got a system of carriage paths that make for some great backwoods bicycling. Everything was crowded, but some of the views of the headlands and the Atlantic were amazing, and generally there was enough outdoors to go around. My mood was also helped by staying at the Bar Harbor hostel, which housed a very friendly staff and a gregarious crew of international guests (and which, despite the unfathomable rates the local hotels were charging, was still a bargain.)
I didn't want to sit around too long, though, so this morning I gathered up my information on eastern Maine and Canada and headed back the way I came, looping out of Bar Harbor and turning north and east along the Maine coast. As I expected, the crowds thinned out dramatically as soon as I got away from the Acadia area, and I've enjoyed several stretches of mostly empty roads today. I also feel like I'm seeing a little more of the "real" Maine that was pretty hard to discern through the crazy crowds in the south of the state. (Although the antique shops on this route still seem to outnumber stores selling actually useful things, so I guess I'm not quite off the tourist trail.)
My plan is to camp tonight in Lubec, easternmost city in the U.S., and spend tomorrow exploring Campobello Island before catching a pair of ferries that will drop me in New Brunswick, Canada. I'm either going to head all the way through New Brunswick and enter Nova Scotia from its northeast corner, or (if I don't like the riding up there) catch a ferry that will lead me right to Nova Scotia. I'm planning to spend 10-14 days on this little jaunt, after which I will catch a ferry back to Maine and ride the rest of the way home to Massachusetts.
Its great to be back on the road again. I was a bit trepidatious at first about having to figure out the route by myself, but I'm starting to get into it. So far, so good.
Greatest thing I've seen today: a town line sign that proudly declared "Cherryfield: Blueberry Capital of the World." It would appear the town naming committee kind of dropped the ball on that one...