National Parks and Recreation

It’s been awhile! You know, with this pesky pandemic and all. But I’m getting my first vaccine shot tomorrow and the world is slowly opening back up, so be prepared for a summer full of hiking!

But in the meantime, I’m going to look back at some adventures we took last summer in Maine. We obviously had to cancel a lot of planned trips due to covid, but we still managed to escape the city a couple of times.

First up was Eastport, Maine. We booked an AirBNB in what is usually a bustling tourist town come summertime, but was sadly a ghost town due to the pandemic.

But it was certainly very beautiful. Luckily(?) enough, this trip also happened to fall two days after I lost my job. And, while I almost cancelled it because of everything that was going on, I’m glad we still went and were able to unwind and disconnect for several days.

We also got a cool surprise on our last day in town when a cruise ship (with only crew members on board) had to dock in town while they quarantined and figured out where they were going next. So that was pretty cool.

It was hard to capture on camera, but it was crazy how big this ship looked compared to this tiny New England town. You could see it from basically everywhere and it towered over everything.

The main reason I wanted to go to Eastport, however, was because it’s near the Easternmost point in the United States. I had already been to the Southernmost point in Key West, FL on a Disney Cruise in 2011. (Remember cruises? *sigh*)

And I’ve been pretty determined to hit all four extremes in the continental United States ever since. The Westernmost point is in Olympic National Park in Washington, which I obviously already wanted to go to (plus, I can check out Forks and La Push and jump headfirst into my Twilight superfandom). And the Northernmost point is that stupid blip where Minnesota pops up into Canada: Angle Inlet, MN. Look it up on Google Maps!

Back in Maine, you’ll find the Easternmost point in Quoddy Head State Park in Lubec, Maine.

We had the place virtually to ourselves on this chilly Tuesday morning. It was a nice little area. In the above picture, you can see Canada in the background. The international border is also a mess here and there were times when we were both East and North of parts of Canada because of all the islands and weird peninsulas. I would also check this out on a map if you’re nerdy like me and are fascinated by that kind of thing.

There was a nice little park with hiking trails along the peninsula, so we did a quick lap through the woods.

Oh yeah, and this was right after I bleached my hair. So I look super strange in all these pictures.

After our photo shoot, it was time to slowly make our way back to Boston. I had a few more things to check off my bucket list along the way though.

First was the Rockland Breakwater.

If you know me at all, you know I love a good jetty. Anything involving rocks, really. And boy was this a lot of rocks!

I feel like none of my pictures do it any justice. It’s over three-quarters of a mile long! Meaning we had to walk over 1.5 miles just to do this out and back. It was a trek.

It led to a lighthouse at the end. I really enjoyed it. Rockland is also just an adorable New England town that is worth checking out once things open back up.

From there, we continued on down the coast toward our last destination of the trip. One you might recognize!

Recognize it? I’ll give you a hint:

That’s right, it’s the lighthouse that Forrest Gump runs to during his cross country run. It’s Marshall Point Lighthouse for anyone who also wants to check it out.

This wasn’t our first stop on the great Forrest Gump journey. Back in 2018, we stood at the same spot as him in Monument Valley.

And I imagine it probably won’t be our last. It was our last stop of this trip, though.

But we weren’t through with Maine yet! For Canada’s birthday every year we go camping somewhere in New England to hang out in the woods for a few days. And what could be more socially distant and safe than camping in the woods?

This year she chose Maine and we grabbed a campsite up near Acadia National Park. We love Acadia and feel so lucky to have it so close. You can read about our past, busier visits to the park here and here.

We didn’t go too crazy this time around, but we did sneak in another hike up Cadillac Mountain! We took the Ladder Trail to Gorge Path up the East side of the mountain which meant that, after completing it, James and I had officially summited Cadillac via every possible route. We did the North Ridge on our first trip, hiked the South Ridge at sunrise our second trip, and have driven up the cheater road several times.

The view from the top never gets old! This was a tough trail up, too. And it was HOT. Some faired better than others, and Atlas was absolutely not having it. Which led to this situation:

And he is not a light dog to have to carry up a mountain. After a lot of breaks in the shade and copious amounts of water, he made it to the top. Needless to say, we were not going to make the poor, hot puppy hike all the way back down. Good thing that aforementioned cheater road exists! So guess who volunteered to run back down the mountain to grab the car and drive up to pick everybody up? Hell yeah! Give me all of the steps!

Don’t let that face fool you. I was having a blast! I was rewarded for my efforts with a nice picnic on the big rocks by Thunder Hole, AKA one of my actual favorite places in the entire world.

And some Maine blueberry ice cream, because what could be better?

Overall, it was an amazing trip! And it was nice to still have a sense of normalcy. I feel like I fall more and more in love with Maine every year and I can’t wait to see what she has in store for us this summer.

Stay safe, everybody! We’ll be back to travelling soon.