Bucksport, Maine

Total Km = 444

Cloudless skies greeted us in St. Stephen this morning and we immediately gained an hour when we crossed the border. St. Stephen’s crossborder counterpart is Calais, Maine and they share a lot together including responding to each other fire alarms, medical services with all infants until recently being born in St Stephen, etc. The lady at the info center in Calais even told us about a joint celebration where the parade starts in one town and ends in the other with all people on the floats preapproved for the border crossing. Kind of makes one feel good. The picture is St. Stephen across the St. Croix River from Calais.

In spite of the TERRIBLE secondary roads in this state (we had been warned about one part of the road by the fellow at a state park but weren’t really prepared for some of it) we meandered along the coast, managing to get lost only once – we won’t elaborate – it was the fault of the map and possibly the aging eyes seeing a road connecting that was sort of a dot indicating the town. They really should build a bridge there! Anyway, we poked around into many little towns along the coast having a great day. We even managed to find Samuel De Champlain and have Norma’s picture taken with him.

Made our way to Bar Harbor planning to take in some of the things to see there – it was a really interesting looking little town - but it was so very congested with traffic we just continued on to Stonington where we had hoped to get accommodation for the night It is a very quaint little place but the one motel was full and no answer at the B&B so here we are in Bucksport. . We were amazed at all the art galleries on the back roads. It is really beautiful scenery here so could see why it would capture the interest of artists.

Maine is really into their lobster. We saw many places where they had the kettles boiling outside the restaurant ready to deal with your order. We have learned some really interesting lobster facts, like it used to be food for prisoners as it was considered garbage food as they are bottom feeders, the Acadians, being poor used it for their main food as the gentry wouldn’t eat it. They also spread the unedible parts in their gardens for feed.

Decided to include a photo of what Norma has viewed for the past 15,000 km! It’s not as bad as it seems, but might help you to understand why she falls asleep sometimes back there – no hope of that today though with the bumpy roads.