Loading up the bikes on the Cat Ferry.

The "Cat"

Later in the afternoon, we headed into town to get our ferry passes and drove on to the terminal. The "Cat" is a catamaran ferry, billed as the world's fastest ferry, and it runs from Bar Harbor to Yarmouth Nova Scotia in about 4 hours, at an equivalent of more than 50 miles per hour. They load up all the motorcycles in one section of the ferry, and provide straps for you to secure the bikes so they don't fall over. Since it was a beautiful day for our crossing there was little reason to think the bikes might fall over, but better safe than sorry.

Jason is a talented photographer - even with his left hand!

Jason in Acadia

Acadia and the Ferry

We had reserved a 4:00 ferry trip to Nova Scotia, so we had most of day 3 to explore Acadia National Park, which is just outside town. There is a loop road that curls through the park, but the real attraction is the coastline. The rocks drop right into the water, which is incredibly clear (and COLD). Although I had heard about Maine's rocky coastline, I didn't expect the cliffs to be as sqare and consequently, jungle-gym-like, as they were. Jason and I were like kids, climbing all over the place and jumping from rock to rock.

Did I mention the weather? Sunny, kind of hot, actually, especially in the bike pants as we were climbing all over the rocks. We rode to the top of the highest pead in the park, Caddilac Mountain, and ate a picnic lunch looking down over the bay. There are lots of little islands right off the bay called, endearingly, the porcupines. With the fir trees sticking up on them the only thing you can see, they look a lot like their namesakes.

The view from the restaurant (it's actually nighttime, the long exposure makes it look more like dusk).

Baa HaBaa

The ride on day 2 was intentionally short, as we wanted to have a chance to explore Bar Harbour at least a little bit before heading off to Nova Scotia. July and August are the peak of high season for the area, and the town itself was crawling with tourists. Within the town itself, the primary passtimes seem to be eating (seafood, of course) and purchasing kitchy maine souvenirs with some combination of lobsters, seashells, and moose on them. We decided that Maine wins some sort of prize for the worst puns utilized in store names ever. "Moosely Maine", and "Mainely Moose" themes abound, but our favorite was actually an outdoor restaurant right in Bar Harbour named Carmen Veranda. Ouch.

So, although we did walk around a little bit, most of what we did in Bar Harbour involved cocktails and a late-ish dinner down at the docks. In my somewhat (!) inebriated state I decided the best thing to pour on top of several gin and tonics would be a two pound lobster. Ugh. We staggered back to the hotel and I pretty much collapsed into bed immediately.

Day 1, headed into Maine. . .

Tiiny little pictures. . .

OK, so I know you can't really see that first picture. Will work on improving photo size so they are actually discernable. Trust me, it's a pic of two bikes in my driveway, you're not missing much. The first day, we headed up the long way through southern Vermont, winding our way up and over towards a campground in Maine. We realized at about 2 that we were definitely taking the slooow route, so we bopped up the highway for about 60 miles to make a little time. Most of the ride was on lovely back roads like this one.

We camped just over the state border in Maine, in the White Mountain National Forest. Lots of bug spray used that evening. We were up early the next day, headed down more Maine back rounds toward Baa Haabaa.

The bikes in the driveway on Day 1!

The trip begins!

Over the next couple of days I am hoping to get a chance to post some trip highlight pictures as well as stories now that we are back home safe and sound. I originally wanted to be able to post from the road, but without a computer and download software for the photos it would have been a pretty substantial challenge. As you'll see, a lot of the spots we stopped didn't exactly have high speed access anyway. So. . .away we go!

The Friday that we left was actually a beautiful day - clear and sunny but not too hot. We had packed most of our stuff the night before, so we really just needed to do one last check and head out. Jason can carry quite a bit more than me in the huge Jesse bags, plus he had all the gizmos, including the charger for the radios (so we can talk bike to bike), phone, iPod, camera battery and chargers, etc.