Day Sixteen, Digby, NS to Ellison, ME

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Greetings New England Adventure fans,

Today, we officially started heading home from Nova Scotia, albeit in the most circuitous route. We were up at 5:00 AM to be at the ferry landing by 7:00 AM. Having motorcycles, they allowed us to board first before the cars, motor homes and trailers. Negotiating the wet steel boarding ramp was only slightly less dangerous than the slick, wet car deck. We were cautioned to beware the of the steel deck, as when it was last repainted, they neglected to add any abrasive material. Riding on the wet deck was like ice skating on a frozen pond with tennis shoes, slicker than snot. Staff said that several motorcycles had been dropped recently. The crossing on the "Princess of Acadia" ferry was a three hour event at full ahead slow. We retired to the dining room where we had a very reasonable, and a very mediocre breakfast, cold powdered eggs, cold potatoes, and sausage that must have been made from the south end of a northbound Caribou because it wasn't like any pork sausage I've ever had before. After breakfast the boys settled into various activities and non-activities for the crossing. I watched a movie, Ironman with Robert Downey Jr., on the big screen TV. It was reasonably entertaining and took up nearly two of the threes hours.

We disembarked at St. John, New Brunswick, under blue skies with temperatures in the low seventies and headed for Calis, Maine, USA for the border crossing. Arriving at the border we were all ushered into one lane simultaneously by US Customs Officer Egan, who collected our passports and advised us that it would not be necessary to remove our helmets, as has occurred to us in the past while re-entering the United States. He asked us where we were from and passed us through the border without further delay. That is not to say we were not all photographed by Uncle Sam as we passed through the border. Hope they got my good side.

We headed for Bar Harbor, ME, and elected to take the scenic route along the coast in lieu of the more direct truck route. We stopped along the way at the East Quaddy Head Lighthouse, the eastern most point in the United States, followed by lunch in Lubec, ME, the eastern most town in the United States.

We didn't think much about it at the time, but Jack fell asleep at the lunch table and we had to wake him up when his food arrived. We attributed it to our early wake-up call. However, later at a fuel stop Jack, who never complains about anything, indicated that he was very congested and was not feeling well. We began to look for some lodging for Jack but had to ride another forty miles and contend with some light rain before finding a motel in Ellison, ME, some twenty miles short of our Bar Harbor destination. Jack retired for the evening immediately without supper. We hope he feels better in the morning.

We stopped near a cemetery to put our rain gear on when a light rain began to fall, as it was getting late in the afternoon and the temperature was dropping. Getting wet on a hot day is bearable, but a cool evening is out of the question. Ironically, adjacent to the cemetery was a traffic sign prominently displaying the admonishon, "Dead End," how true.

We finished our evening at the Jasper Motel and Restaurant advertising ten different lobster dishes. I tried a bite of Bill's Lobster only to confirm that I'm apparently still allergic to some shell fish. Darn, I really wanted some Maine Lobster! Somehow, a turkey dinner at a New England seafood restaurant is just plain wrong.

Here's another casual observation that I've made over the past two weeks, Steve, who some of the boys have begun to call "Blog Boy," as he documents everything he does, everything he sees, and every place we've been in his cell phone for later transcription into his blog, is also our most prolific picture taker. But, I've decided that he only photographs two things, everything that moves and everything that doesn't!