Another right hand turn

Ann and Sylvia took our photo as we said goodbye and prepared to head out of Rockwood, the most northerly point of our journey in Maine. The ladies showed us pictures of a moose and calf they had seen this morning. They seem to know their preferred habitat.

A "Flying" moose, according to legend, helped a young Indian man survive a waterfall.

Twenty miles down Highway 6 we reached Greenville, a backwoods outpost at the southern end of Moosehead Lake. As we rode through we saw the SS Katahdin, a tourist steamship and yet more floatplanes waiting to take people out on fishin', huntin' and shootin' trips.

Monument at Greenville, attributed to James L. Sardonis, and inscription.

"I went to the woods because I wished to

 live deliberately, to front only the essential

facts of life, and see if I could not learn

 what it had to teach and not, when I came

 to die, discover that I had not lived." -

"In wilderness is the preservation of the World"  -  Henry David Thoreau

So many logging trucks. A waitress we mentioned this to said they have been taking timber out of Maine for as long as she could remember - but the logs were much smaller now. We swear the logs are getting smaller in Australia too.

 

We stopped at Abbot Village for breakfast. Here we found the local bakery and were tempted into having a decidedly unhealthy breakfast of date crumble and apple turnovers. The latter was filled not with fresh whipped cream, but sticky sweet egg white whip, and the date crumble was over the top... This will satisfy our pastry urge for a few months by which time we will probably forget the experience and indulge again.

In Gilford-Sangerville we found a covered bridge that is still in use. There were many of these bridges in New England, but few remain passable. It is interesting to see how they supported, sometimes spanning lengthy stretches across a river.

The miles rolled under our wheels as we passed through forests, towns and lakes.

By the time we reached Howland we were getting hungry again. We got lucky here and found a delightful diner that had lobster rolls on their blackboard menu. These were delicately delicious and helped us forget our sweet indulgence from the bakery.

Highway 6 that we started out on this morning took us all the way to Topsfield. A light shower of rain caught up with us just as we arrived, so we stopped for more coffee. The shop owner told us that power had only just come back on after a 2 hour outage so the coffee was freshly brewed.

We had to take a detour off the main road because of an accident that had blocked it. The road was very oily. The rain made it worse. We later passed an ambulance rushing the other way.

Turning onto US 1 we rode 38 miles to Calais (pronounced "Callas" by the Maine-stream population). There were mud flats on the river separating the US from Canada, a sign that we had finally reached the Atlantic Coast . There is a totally different smell in coastal areas. The wind also seems to increase. We rode on, heading for Perry, our planned destination for the night. This town represents the geographical halfway point on our journey and the second right hand turn we have made - the first being in Vancouver, Canada on the pacific coast. There was nowhere to stay here, and our GPS indicated the nearest motels were behind us. Rather than turn back, we continued on to Machias where we found suitable lodgings.