The MAINE Attractions

During the last week of August, Kent and I took a nine-day, 2, 900 mile road trip through Maine, three Canadian provinces, and New York state. I thought I'd start of with the highlights of our delightful visit to Maine. As you can see from the pictures, we had perfect weather! Temperatures in the 70's and sunshine.

The first day of our trip we just drove from Virginia to Boston, Mass, and stayed with my sister overnight. We headed out at 7am the next morning and drove to the southern coast of Maine. This was our day for seeing lighthouses and eating lobster rolls! The lighthouse below is called the Nubble Lighthouse.

We saw a sign for this wildlife refuge and knew we had to stop, since our daughter-in-law is named Rachel Carson!

We arrived in Kennebunkport, Maine, which we'd heard of because the Bushes have a summer home there.

We pulled in to town in time to buy a lobster roll at the Clam Shack. Since it was only 11:30am, we beat the crowds that were lined up an hour later.

 We saw the "Wedding Cake House" which is a landmark in Kennebunkport,

and below is a picture of the Bush home.

Our next stop was the Portland Head lighthouse,

and then on to the city of Portland. We drove to the harbor area and bought another lobster roll at the Portland Lobster Company.

This was my favorite lobster roll because I liked the bread it was on the best.

Our last stop on this first day was the "Desert of Maine", a freak of nature so that a large deposit of sand was left after the glaciers receded thousands of years ago.

We spent the night outside of Bangor, and day two of our trip found us at Acadia National park just as it opened at 8am. We were delighted to find out that it was a "fee-free" day!

We drove up to Cadillac Mountain, which is the highest point on the Atlantic Coast of the United States. We walked around the top of the mountain and saw some good views of the park.

As we were on our way to our next stop, we passed through the towns who started the "Wreaths Across America" program. Kent and I have helped to distribute the wreaths at Arlington Cemetery, and we knew the program originated in Maine, but didn't know where until we were driving through.

The lighthouse below is called the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse, and is at the most eastern point in the USA. It was foggy as we drove to it, but it cleared up as we were looking around.

Here's a close-up of the marker, which you can see behind us in the photo above, with the two people looking at it.

The town of Lubec, Maine, is the easternmost TOWN in the United States.

Our last stop of the day was St. Croix Island, an international historic site, shared by both the U.S. and Canada. It marked an early settlement of the French.

As we headed into northern Maine, away from the coast, we saw lots of signs like the one below.

The friends we visited in northern Maine took us out on their boat on the lake just down from their house, and this is the view we had.

We had to check out the city of Fort Kent, way up north on the Canadian border.

That's where we saw the beginning of Route 1, which starts in Maine and ends in Florida. It runs through our county in Virginia just a couple of miles from our house.

And last, but not least, we visited the little town of Madawaska.

It's claim to fame is that it's the most northeastern town in the United States, and calls itself one of the four corners of the US. The other corners being in Florida, southern California and Washington state.

As you can see, we had a magnificent time exploring the state of Maine and managed to see lots of cool places in the four days we spent there. Now that the post is done, go through and count how many colors of polo shirts Kent was wearing in all the photos!!