Road Trip 2007

Total RoadTrip Mileage: 1,500

Jason & I decided to take six days over the holiday weekend to do a sort of northeast scenic tour. I can say now our plans were totally ambitious for the amount of time we had (not to mention the amount of time we wanted to spend in the car) and we probably only did half of what we wanted. Our road companion was this sweet book I bought last year 100 Classic Hikes of the Northeast, that was a motivator to conquer a few more hikes while on the trip. We left on Wednesday morning from Albany heading north through the Adirondacks, and this was our first stop:

Jason & Riley on Poke-O-Moonshine Mtn.

Poke-O-Moonshine is just south of Plattsburgh and about a 2 hr hike. That is beautiful lake Champlain in the background. We finished up, then took the ferry over to Grande Isle in Vermont where we camped out on North Hero Island for the night. The next day we crossed into Canada at the most random border crossing ever. I was worried about getting the dog across but all they were interested in was where we worked and why we were using that crossing. The dirt road leading into Canada was a good sign not many people use this approach ... We skirted Montreal and headed towards Quebec. It is no joke that everyone there speaks french but we were able to get by with the assistance of helpful signs like this:

Most of our day was spent in Quebec. At first I was not very impressed. There was a huge castle downtown and a few cute shops and views but not much else going on. Luckily we stayed long enough to find our way to their old fort, parks, and the old Quebec portion of the city that reminded me of Disneyland more than anything.

While Quebec was nice to visit for the day, there wasn't really anything compelling enough for us to decide to stay overnight. We didn't want to bother with a hostel since we had the dog so we decided to keep driving. We made it all the way to Edmunston, New Brunswick that night (my first time in two new canadian provinces). The next day we had to decide between going down Brunswick to the easternmost tip of Maine, which we somehow thought would be very exciting, or heading over to Baxter Park, which hosts the highest mountain in Maine as well as the terminus of the Appalachian Trail. Easy choice. Unfortunately about 40 min from Baxter we tuned into the radio to discover that the park does not allow 'domestic' animals ... Unwilling to let that ruin our day we found something just as satisfying to do with our time:

After spending the day swimming, drinking beers and relaxing we made it down to Acadia Nat'l Park and set up camp at Seawall. The weather the next two days was unreal. 90 degrees, blue skies, and perfect. We spent the time hiking, swimming, and eating a lot of lobster. I really wanted to kayak but unfortunately the tour operators all told us that we could only do a guided tour, not rent out our own kayaks, due to insurance increases post Sept 11 on rentals. While I still fail to see the connection of terrorism & kayaking, I couldn't subject us both to a 20 person kayak tour ...

Jason at top of Cadillac Mtn in Acadia

Me on the climb up Beehive Mtn

Jason overlooking Sand Beach

Chillin' in AcadiaMonkeying Around

Riley Dog

Monday morning we hit the road again down scenic highway 1 along the coast. We stopped in Camden for our final hike of the trip, Mt Battie. Camden is definetely a place I could move to, a cute seaside new england village.

Then on to Boothbay harbor for lunch and visited a couple of pottery studios. We saw this cute little guy following the car for about half a mile as we were headed back to the highway ...

A final stop at Freeport for some outlet shopping at the always exciting Patagonia sales, and we were headed home. Six days in the blink of an eye ... I miss Maine already.