Bicycling Maine 2015 (1) - Off to Canada

When Rob and I first decided to spend a couple weeks exploring Maine, we thought we'd ride along the coast to Canada, then north along the Canadian border into Aroostook County (I’ve always been intrigued by Aroostook County – so close, but so remote), then back home through the middle of the state.  It seemed reasonable.  After all, AAA publishes a Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont map – New Hampshire and Vermont on one side, Maine on the other - leading one to the assumption that Vermont plus New Hampshire equals Maine.  

But in fact, though Maine may be only the 39^th largest state in the U.S., it is almost as big as the other five New England states combined. (Aroostook County alone is bigger than Connecticut and Rhode Island put together.)

So even before we started, we knew that getting to northern Maine was probably not realistic. And anyway, Maine’s coastline was what really piqued our interest.  How many peninsulas can you count between Portland and Acadia National Park?  Nine?  And look at all those roads that run out from U.S. Route 1 to the end of those peninsulas, some looping back to Route 1, others coming to a dead stop, maybe after linking together a few islands.

Those were the roads we wanted to ride.

The coast of Maine, measured directly from New Hampshire to Canada, is only 228 miles. You can cover that in four days. Even taking some extra days to explore a few peninsulas and dip into Acadia National Park, we figured we could make it to the Canadian border.

As we started out and were leaving our neighborhood, I mentioned to Rob that we’d forgotten our passports – should we go back for them?  Nah, we’ll just wave to the Canadians across the border.

Number of days on the road:           15

Total miles:                                      720
Total time in the saddle:                 58 hours, 10 minutes