After a lovely night catching up with Bob and Sally, dinner of bison burgers, local blueberries, wine and beer we made plans for the next few days together.

Not too early on Saturday morning we packed the car and headed north. The plan was to get as far as we could, and back again in 3 days, hopefully even across the border in to Canada. To get where we were going we had to navigate around Boston, through tunnels choked with traffic. These tunnels are known as the BIG DIG and were constructed to divert traffic away from the city of Boston, a bit like the Clem Jones Tunnel in Brisbane I guess.





We continued north through Maine. The countryside was scattered with beautiful white homes in garden settings. Greg has decided that he could live in Maine as the weather is temperate and the countryside is glorious woodlands, nice roads to ride was the clincher.


We stopped at the Maine border for a picnic lunch and to check out points of interest that we could visit on our journey. After lunch we continued north to Freeport, a town renowned for its outlet shopping. Our main destination was L L Bean, an outlet that sells outdoor recreation equipment and clothing of all types. Bob had told us about this store back in 1990 and we had always wanted to visit. Greg was amazed at the amount and variety of guns and ammunition that were on display for all to buy. Greg and I wandered around marvelling at the variety available in this one store.This store has the most amazing returns policy we have ever heard of, you can return goods for any reason at any time for store credits of the items original price, no questions asked. Sally returned some clothes and received a US$76 credit and bought herself a new jacket with it.


Our next destination was Rockland, a delightful seaside town. We decided that this would be the destination for the night. As today was Greg' birthday (triple 21) we splurged a little on lovely accommodation in the Rockland Harbour Hotel and then a delicious dinner at The Pearl restaurant on the waterside. We wandered the streets of this pretty town until it was time for bed.



























In the morning, after a delicious breakfast, we set off again. Today we had decided to drive to Canada - only just across the border - but still, Canada! We stopped for a break at the Penobscot Narrows Bridge. (Trivia question: Who was Donald Penobscot?) This bridge has a public observatory in one of the cable supports, the tower is 447 feet tall. This bridge's cable supports were in the middle of the bridge with the roadside on either side.

We continued on north towards the Arcadia National Park. Our plan was to visit Cadillac Mountain for the views. Unfortunately, it was very foggy and the only view we saw was a black Cadillac in the parking lot. We drove down to Bar Harbour and checked out the scenery and had lunch.

After lunch we continued north towards Canada. While refueling we had a chat to some riders who were retired police officers and members of the Blue Knights Association. They were on their way home to Prince Edward Island. We continued on to the Canadian border at Calais, showed our passports and we were in, no problems.

Our motel in Saint Andrews was nowhere near as luxurious as the previous night but it did have a lovely garden for us to sit and share a bottle of wine; Greg nicknamed the motel The Bates Motel (from the movie Psycho) so draw your own conclusions. We shared a great dinner in town and chatted happily to the locals.


After our brief visit to Canada we returned to USA. Our first stop was Rockport for lunch - delicious traditional New England clam chowder and a pleasant walk around the town.


We had decided to drive all the way back to Cape Cod today, but Greg was determined to visit Gloucester first. Gloucester was the site of the fishing disaster immortalised in the movie The Perfect Storm. We drove down to the waterfront and paid our respects at the Fisherman's Memorial and were horrified to see how many people had been killed in storms off the coast of Maine. In 1879, over 200 fishermen were lost in the one season.


We then continued to Cape Cod and settled in for another night at Bob and Sally's.