Day five, portland, maine to bar harbour, maine

Let’s just say the Econolodge at Portland was the type of accommodation Mark Batty would have refused to stay at and we will leave it at that, enough said.

We had planned to take Route 1 all the way up the coast to Bar Harbour but we spoke to a local at the servo who goes up to Arcadia every year. He commented that it was still the 4th of July holiday weekend and that road would be a “clusterfk” was the term he used due to the column of traffic on it. We took his advice on the best route to take that would be the most scenic and he was right. We stayed on the 295 to Augusta, then took the 3 across to Belfast, then the 1 to Bar Harbour. The first relaxing, all country, no clusterfck high traffic volumn riding we have had, what a cruisie day. I like Maine.

We stopped for coffee in the middle of nowhere at the Olde Mill diner on Route 3, just east of Lake St George. Didn’t look much from the outside but what an awesome spot with great service and endless filtered coffee that tasted as good as the city espresso’s. Horse, being a connoisseur of all things coffee was not with me so much on the good coffee angle. the locals in their had us pegged as Aussies so we had to put them straight on where the accent came from.

Some real nice spots on the way through, Bucksport, Searsmont, Ellsworth, nice riding.

Arriving in Bar Harbour, we wandered down to a laundromat, which fortuitously had a bar on the back of it, then later headed down into the village. A very cute town, set up for tourists and cruise ships, bit like a mini Arrowtown.

About 5.00 pm the expected thunderstorm hit that had been forecast and it pissed down for 2/3 hrs, good thing the bikes were parked up at the time!!!!!!.

Two nights in Bar Harbour as tommorrow is just cruising around Arcadia National Park and back to the same digs.

Internet playing hard to get for uploading pics so will do that later.