East Coast Un-Tour: Thursday, May 17, 2018

We had a great time with our friends in Quebec. While there we did an enormous amount of walking but zero cycling. We walked all over the old city each day, and one day we drove out to a Canadian National Park for a more rustic hike. Note some of the snow we hiked through in the photo below.

From there we moved on by ourselves to Bar Harbor, Maine and the adjoining Acadia National Park. The park has scenic roads and carriage-ways and we fully expected to pull the tandem out of the van to enjoy the scenery from the bike. It was not to be, though. The weather was very variable and generally cold and windy while we were there, so we just drove around the park instead.

After a couple of days, we were back on Highway US 1, slowly moving down the coast. We overnighted and walked around in Rockland (where the guys and I spent a couple of days last summer on our Maine bike trip). From there, we moved on to Portland, with roadside stops at Georgetown Pottery and at the LL Bean mother-ship.

In Portland, we lucked out and grabbed two nights at a wonderful AirBnB, with fantastic ocean views from our windows, and easy access to South Portland's Greenway Path and the waterside recreation trails across the Casco Bay Bridge in Portland proper. We FINALLY justified carrying the tandem with us all the way to Maine, spending about two and a half hours riding the trails mentioned above. A good bit of that time was spent on portions of US Bike Route 1.

Truth be told, with the exception of the waterside sections, these trails were adequate, but don't match the West Orange Trail back home. If it had been warmer and sunny, we would probably have enjoyed them more. In addition, the off-trail traffic and the busy Casco Bay Bridge were cause for concern. There were a couple of intersections that were so intimidating that we decided to get off and just walk the bike through the pedestrian cross-walks. All that aside, we were delighted to finally be able to get on the bike!