As we drove away from our lovely resort at Attitish Village, we reflected on our wonderful stay. The trees are still breathtaking even as we leave — unbelievable! Three full weeks of beauty — we never could have chosen a better three weeks to be here! The beauty continues and continues. Who would have thought that this morning’s drive could be so gorgeous? We reached the toll road at about 11 — still a lot of fall color along the way! The 275 miles seemed like a long drive. The further north we got, the more rural the countryside became. Some pretty trees were part of the drive most of the way. We like the Pines that have graceful, long, parallel branches and are a lighter green color than the rest. Also interesting are evergreen trees with short needles that are a golden color-almost the same golden as most of the deciduous trees that are still colorful. We later learned that these are Tamarack (sometimes called Larch) and abound in northern Maine and Canada. We reached our resort for the week — a 2 bedroom with loft log cabin, Bruce would like it!
Monday: After a pancake breakfast, we drove across the eastern Maine border (we had to show our passports that David sent us) into New Brunswick, where we rode bikes along the Trans-Canada dirt trail along the river at Woodstock. We parked in the bank parking lot and rode across the pedestrian bridge north along the river to where the trail narrowed to about a foot wide and muddy. We went back to where we started and continued south to where the trail joined the highway. It was a very enjoyable ride, and our gloves and hats kept us comfortable.
When we got back to the parking lot, we exchanged a $100 bill for Canadian money. We also got advice from the bank clerk. Using the credit card sounds like the best way to go. We drove home and went to the hot tub at the resort — a good one again, with a great stimulating action. I beat Verle badly at Boggle. We watched the two discs of the movie “Titanic” that we had checked out from the resort office. We’d never seen it before — interesting and quite well done.
Tuesday: We tried to ride a dirt trail at Patten, but gave up after a mile because it was too rocky and muddy and not fun. We drove our car on the scenic road from the south entrance of Baxter State Park and drove the 47 miles through the park. It was a long but fun drive. There is still a lot of color in some areas, and the scenery changes quite a bit from one part of the park to the next. We only met one tourist and 3 or 4 state vehicles — we seemed to have the whole big park to ourselves, which was good, because the road is more like a one-way road! We got home in time to watch the first game of the World Series at Kansas City.
Wednesday: The right lens fell out of my glasses so we phoned an optometrist in Houlton and they tightened the screws on both lenses and didn’t charge for the repair. Kansas City won the second game of the World Series (rather easily). Their pitcher pitched the whole game – unusual!
Thursday: This was a down day for us. We got up VERY late, went to the hot tub (as we’ve done almost every morning), played Boggle again, and started working on our travel blog, completing the first week as we figured out how to make it work.
Friday: Since we’ve only been in the south half of the big state of Maine, we decided that we would enjoy taking the scenic drive all the way around the top perimeter of the state — a 250 mile drive. The most surprising thing for us was the large part of the state involved in raising potatoes. We were surprised to see so much farm ground, often with little potatoes laying on top of the cultivated ground. As in the rest of Maine, we noted many older large houses, often with barns hooked to them somewhat like in Europe; some look like a two-family home. Many of the farms were prosperous with no rocks. There is also a light green low crop that we couldn’t identify. The tamarack trees are gorgeous, lengthening the fall season of color. Much of the area looks like it could be in Lancaster County in Nebraska except for the tamaracks.
Saturday: One of the biggest reasons for this 6-week vacation was to visit Acadia National Park in Maine. At first it looked like that wasn’t going to work out, but Verle figured out a plan to visit the park between our Saturday check-out from Island Falls and our Sunday check-in in Quebec. That worked really well. We observed that we hadn’t seen a moose in our whole time in Upper Maine — but it’s better to not get to see a moose than to hit one.
We had several surprises in relation to our time at Acadia: As we drove through Bangor, we noticed that the fall leaf color was beautiful, and this continued for the whole way down and the day at the park — so lovely and such a surprise after we’d expected the fall colors to already be gone a couple of weeks ago. The other big surprise is that Acadia park is breathtaking, and we really enjoyed our time there. We went to the Hull Cove Visitor’s Center where we learned the actual identity of the Tamarack trees. Folks from northern Maine mistakenly call them Juniper, but that’s an entirely different tree. The Tamarack are the only conifers whose needles change color in autumn and eventually fall off. They remain so lovely and keep northern Maine beautiful, even after most deciduous trees are leafless.
Our third surprise was just how much we enjoyed the day — beyond our expectations. We went to the movie at the visitor’s center. Then we bought an audio tour of the loop road through the park. The bus and trolley haven’t run since mid-October. But it was great for us to drive through at our own speed and stop and walk wherever we wanted to go. The tour went to the top of Cadillac mountain. What fun! It’s the highest mountain on the east coastline (about the altitude of our home in Nebraska.) We made several stops and walks on the way up — breathtaking.
I loved the stop at Thunder Hole even though it wasn’t making a loud noise today. We spent a long time walking all the way around the top of Cadillac Mountain on a loop trail all the way around the top. Wow! We left the park around 4 p.m. A humorous sign said, “Pete’s Pretty Good Ice Cream.” Not wanting to miss any of the scenery, we found a motel before dark in Newport, Maine (using the GPS accommodations help.) The Kansas City Royals won their third game of the World Series (to only 1 for the Mets) so that was fun to watch.