Sunday, October 1, 2017

Heading Down East - Dispatches from Canada

 
Dateline: St Andrews-by-the-Sea, New Brunswick, Canada

After three months at our lake cottage in Maine, I departed early this morning for points north and east.  My trip today took me through central Maine to Bangor where I crossed the Penobscot River.  From there I traveled across the Airline Highway (State Route 9) to Calais [CAL-us] and the Canadian border.

There are essentially five ways to reach Canada through Maine.  There is the coastal route along US Highway One, and although very scenic in many spots, it is a slow slog through numerous towns clogged with traffic, much of it headed toward Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park.  Once past there, however, the traffic dies down but it is still a long, slow trip.  Then there is Interstate 95 up past Houlton, but this would put me far north of where I want to be once I got to Canada.  My favorite is Route 9, and the obe I followed today, is the so-called “Airline Highway.”  Approximately 100 miles from Bangor to Calais, it is the shortest and most direct route to the Canadian border.  And whereas there is relatively less traffic on the Airline Highway than found on the other two main routes, much of what you do encounter is large logging trucks barreling toward their destinations.  The final two routes are State Route 27 from Farmington up through Coburn Gore entering Québec near Lac Mégantic, in the Eastern Townships south of the St. Lawrence River, and US Highway 201 through Skowhegan and Jackman that leads into Québec’s Beauce region and St. Georges, on the Chaudière River south of Québec City.  Neither of these routes would take me anywhere close to where I needed to be today. 
 
I wanted to get to Canada as quickly as possible . . . especially since I lost an hour   entering the Atlantic Time Zone when I crossed the St. Croix River from Calais, Maine into St. Stephen, New Brunswick.  Once you leave Bangor and begin driving along the southern bank of the Penobscot River, you don’t see much of anything except trees, more trees, and the occasional marshy bogs populated with thick stands of bleached deadwood amongst the living trees. This is the silver lining in taking this route given the fact that the autumn colors . . . the red maples and the golden birch scattered among the spruce and balsam . . . are reaching their zenith in Down East Maine now that October is here.  Who can complain about driving through millions of trees decked out in their fall finery?  This is lonely country where the townships have numerical designations rather than proper names.  Very few people live there.

I arrived in Calais in the early afternoon.  A beautiful, cloudless sunny day with temperatures hovering in the high 50s (the thermometer dipped below the freezing mark for the first time overnight).   After brief and very friendly Canadian border formalities I ran some errands and then continued to my day’s destination.  I am spending the next two nights here in St. Andrews, New Brunswick.  Founded in 1783 by American Loyalists, this shire town of Charlotte County is situated on the southern end of a narrow peninsula separating the boundary waters at the mouth of the St. Croix River and the northern extension of Passamaquoddy Bay.  It has been several years since I was last here and I am looking forward to a casual day exploring the town and the nearby islands situated in Canadian boundary waters. 

It will be another two weeks before I return to the USA.  Frankly, I am in no big hurry to get back.

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