Lisa & Bob at The Eastern End of the US Saturday, July 17: In Search of Whirlpools

West Quoddy Head

It was now around 12:30. Plenty of time left! We headed east further. At one point, a mother doe and baby fawn were in our way! We slowed for them, but they got scared and bounded back into the woods. In hardly any time at all, we were passing the sign for Lubec, easternmost town in the US. Lubec is the southeast tip of Maine, right in the Bay of Fundy. We followed the signs to the state park, and soon were at the West Quoddy lighthouse. Candy stripes, mimiced everywhere in Maine, this was set up by Thomas Jefferson at the easternmost point in the US. Bob was exhausted by now and took a short nap. I wandered by the lighthouse, then both of us napped. The tide was very low still, and the whole area around here was practically dry. Now, though, the tide started to come in. We hoped to be at Old Sow, the biggest whirlpool in the Western Hemisphere, at 2 hrs before high tide, 5pm. That was when it was at its most active.

East Quoddy Head

We drove back into Lubec, to the spot of another huge whirlpool - under the bridge between Lubec and Camponello Island, New Brunswick, Canada. We crossed into Canada, amusing the customs agent. *poof* all the flags were Canadian, signs gave limits in kilometers. We got to the ferry point - the whirlpool is best seen off of Deer Island, which we could easily see across the water. Deer Island is also Canadian. There was no office for the ferry! Just a few cars waiting and a sign with prices and times. The prices, of course, were in Canadian. The times, as Bob pointed out, were also in a new time zone! The ferry wouldn't be there until 3pm, i.e. 4pm EST. And we didn't have Canadian money. We gave up on the Deer Island theory and drove to the tip of Campobello, to see its East Quoddy Head lighthouse - with a big red cross on it. Two seals played beneath it in the ocean. I pointed them out to Bob, and he said, did you see what they're playing in? It was a whirlpool! I'd only noticed the seals! Hey, in researching this I just discovered that the lighthouse is on an ISLAND that you can only get to at low tide!! It was so dry that I just assumed you could get to it all the time. More evidence of the incredible tides.

Then we headed back. As we crossed the bridge this time, we saw the whirlpool beneath was indeed gaining activity. We waved to the new customs agent (neither asked for any ID at all), and headed north.

There's an inlet north of Lubec, and tide activity in here is amazing. Tons of whirlpools, and even reversing falls. We decided to try these. We went through the park in that area, then stopped at the Cobscook campground to get directions. They had them printed out and xeroxed! Around 10 minutes later, we were there.

At the ocean part of this park, there were huge whirlpools and other eddies swirling in the water. The deal was, a river emptied into the ocean here. As the tide came in, though, the ocean rose higher than the river mouth and started pushing water up the river! We moved around to the side of the park where the river actually was. It was currently rushing down to the ocean, over a bunch of rocks. We could see the tide coming in, though, rising higher and higher. Eventually while we were there, the ocean rose as high as the rocks and would eventually have gone "backwards" over the rocks as it rose further. There were tons of whirlpools everywhere! Even large whirlpools had baby whirlpools all along their edges. Water would just spontaneously bubble up from seemingly calm areas. Very, very amazing. There were tons of double-creasted cormorants in the area, too.

We went north a bit more, to Perry, Geographic center between the equator and the north pole. You'd think there would be a whole "circle" of these markers, but there one was, from the National Geographic. So we stopped there, then headed back south towards Acadia.

The sunset was completely lovely, over the rock and pine trees and greens and ocean. Still reminded me completely of Ireland. Slowly, touristy Maine reasserted itself as we crossed that invisible barrier. It hit full force as we hit Ellsworth and headed south on Route 3 towards Mount Pleasant Island, home of Acadia Park and Bar Harbour.

Arrrggghhh, the tourist traps! Everywhere. There wasn't even any lessening as we crossed onto the island - I didn't even see where we did it! Just more tourist traps, more roads, more houses and telephone poles. We *DID* notice when we hit Bar Harbour though. Waaaaaah! Tourist mecca. Bright lights, trendy malls, loud restaurants. Blech blech. We escaped quickly from here. Amazingly, we turned into the park and suddenly, there was what I'd been expecting - deep greens, tall hills, forested mountains and bright stars. And quiet. I was soothed. We pulled into Blackwoods Campground around 9pm, and they had our assigned spot posted on the ranger booth. We found our spot, 20B, quickly. It was an end spot, lots of trees to separate sites. We had our tent set in around 10 minutes (lots of practice) and were curled up inside it, quite contented. The weather was perfect. We were tired but happy. The family next to us was a little bizarre - singing strange songs and laughing hysterically - but soon they went to bed and we snuggled down.

Sunday at Acadia
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