Day 9: Bar Harbor to St. Andrew, BC

We continued up the Maine coast and into Canada. More detail: Today was a bit of a crossroads. All of our lodgings up to this point were set before we left home. Things were booking up fast so we needed to do that. Our next long resting spot is Quebec City and we had one night to get there. Plan A was to go up through the middle of Maine and we reserved a motel in Waterville, ME. But… we had thought of going to Campobello Island, the summer home of FDR. It is east along the coast, just across the border in New Brunswick, Canada and we decided to go there. Plan B would be to go there, and back to Waterville today. A long day. Plan C emerged when friends in Bar Harbor told us that they had a good visit to Campobello Island, and then stayed at St. Andrews, NB. So we canceled Waterville, booked a room in St. Andrews and took off. I had never heard of St. Andrews.

We were excited to head further up the Maine coast to see what was there. This is typical of the roads. Mostly US 1.

This stretch was pretty quiet with a few places like this along the way.

Of course lobster was still the thing, even at an ice cream place.

Wild blueberries are not as big as lobsters, but they are a thing in Maine. And they are really good. Super small, nothing like they giants they sell in the grocery store these days. And this attraction felt like it was out of the 1950s.

Wild Blueberry Land is an curious place. It reminds me a lot of the Orange Show in Houston. It has a (maybe usable) put-put golf course and lots of displays and information inside. Lots of blueberry food, etc., but no fresh blueberries - they wouldn’t be harvesting until late July.

We cross over to Canada at Lubec. Not much in this town.

This lighthouse, the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse, just south and a bit east of Lubec, is really the furthest eastern spot in the continental US (actually a rock just offshore!). It was kind of cool to be in that spot. And it is the closest spot in the US to Africa! (Look on a globe.). As you see, it was very foggy here, but there was no fog a half mile drive away.

This is a view from one of the cottages on the historic FDR summer resort. It is located in Canada (Campobello Island), but this is a joint historic park of the US & Canada. There is a visitor center and a restaurant. The tour of the house was really good, in our case by a woman who has worked there for years and grew up on the island. We were glad we stopped here. We had to pass through customs to get into Canada, which was just a passport check and a few questions. But the border guard was a strange guy, like a Wes Anderson character.

To get to St. Andrews, NB, we could have back-tracked to Lubec in the US and re-enter Canada by land, or stay in Canada and take a ride on two ferries with two short drives. The ferries had “what if’s” written all over them, but the thought of two more border crossings was enough to go ahead and take them. It would be a bit of an adventure. Both ferry rides turned out great with beautiful views. Ferry #1 is pictured here. St. Andrews turned out to be a great little seaside town.