New England #6

’m sitting here in a jacket after spraying myself with 98% Deet. I’m overlooking one of the most beautiful scenes on the trip so far. We lucked up and ended up in this cool old strip motel on the bank of some tidal river. We have sat here all evening watching the sun go down and the moon come up. We watched little shore birds fly in formation, we watched something that looked like the lock ness monster (neighbors later told us it was probably seals). We watched the old guy go out to the moored boat and adjust the moorings meanwhile messing up the whole mirror pool effect of the wide spot in the river. Vickie just took a picture of me writing this. It is impossible to put into words. The coast of Maine is unlike anything we are accustomed to. There are no beaches, just rocky coastline. We lucked up and found this place in some little town called Machias. Earlier this afternoon we were at Quoddy Head State Park in Lubec, ME which is the furthermost East point in the continental U S. There is a nice old lighthouse there and the water view was beautiful. The tides in this area run 28 feet. Everywhere today we saw the low tide cause it was at 3:50 p.m. The high tide is supposed to be at 9:30 tonight, and low is at 3 am (I’ll be sure to see that one) and high is again at 9:30 am tomorrow. Vickie just reminded me we have a full moon overhead. I didn’t realize it. It might not be full but it is 17/18^ths full. I mean, you couldn’t pay money (which we did) for a setting like this. The motel is populated by a mixture of tourists and construction workers. It is interesting. I have overheard big old burly construction workers on the cell phone telling their families how incredible the view is here. I believe I’m going to have to keep this place a secret to only my closest friends. Put this place on your list of places to visit on the coast of Maine. Oh it’s a ring around the moon---what does that mean? I’m going to have to look that up. I just can’t st op looking at how beautiful this setting is. I’ll post some pictures later.

Yesterday I made myself a note to mention the cute little coffee makers they have started using in most motel rooms. They have little disposable baskets with coffee already in them, and they brew only one cup at a time. Also don’t have warmers so you don’t have to worry about leaving them on. You brew directly into the Styrofoam cup you drink out of. So now instead of biodegradable paper filter packs and coffee grounds, we have an additional plastic tray per cup of coffee. Much simpler for motel though and people don’t take the coffee packs with them to use later. (unless they have one of these curious little machines at home.)

Helen’s restaurant is in the same parking lot as our motel and is supposed to have good food. We are going to wander across the parking lot and partake of their fine food some time this evening. We stopped today at Calais at the Maine tourist bureau. We picked up a lot of literature for our trip down Rt. 1 and two very pretty free Maine apples. We asked the nice lady if there was a good diner in town for lunch. She directed us to Karen’s diner, which she said was the most popular. We found it quickly. They had posted that their off season hours were only till 2 p.m. on Mon and Tues. We got there about 1:15 and they took us in. The menu had all sorts of cool things. I ended up with a cup of split pea and ham soup (excellent) and a "Haddock Sandwich" Boy was it good. Vickie ordered Macaroni and cheese with a diner roll. It was quite interesting made with a vegamel sauce laced with cheese. Well it's later and we are off for the restaurant across the parking lot for dinner . (back) Food was pretty good, I had stroganoff and Vickie had a hot pork sandwich with gravy. I brought back a piece of Maine apple pie for later. Rose early this a.m. in time to see the sun rise over the water (a Kodak moment) then proceeded to Helen’s Restaurant once again for breakfast. We got back to our room and the water had risen to within feet of the deck. Going to upload some pictures to share and get ready to go. Headed for Bar Harbor today.

Wes