The prettiest town in Maine...

Well, we are definitely now getting into the beautiful parts of Maine, this is why the licence plates on the cars call Maine 'Vacationland'.  And it seems that all of the East Coast have come up here for Vacation!!

The fishing villages are bucolic and picturesque (as Peter says), but far too many this far south are just traffic jams of cars.  We are currently having a laundry/work/blog/blob afternoon on the outskirts of a twon called Wicassett - or officially - 'The Prettiest Town in Maine'.  I took a photo as we walked our bike through the town on the way here.  Note, walked our bikes, it was too scary with cars in traffic jams to ride.

The traffic jam in Wicassett which stretched for 2 - 3 miles either side of the town.  The town looked pretty down the side streeets, a lot like Cambridge, but given some of the other towns that we have seen, nuh, don't think it was the prettiest town!

The other towns that we have seen, we think are more pretty.  Belfast (lovely despite our preconceived ideas!), Camden, although major major touristy and a summer residence town.

Belfast at low tide.  Lots of fishing boats.  The town was up on the hill with lovely back streets (which we took to get off the main road) that reminded me of Louisiana with lots of trees and nice properties

Belfast.  It is hard to see, but this is still an Active port and on the right hand side is the pier that they are upgrading.  The tides here fall 14 feet.  In Digby/Nova Scotia/St John, they fall up to 24 feet.  Until we got to Belfast, I didn't understand what this meant.  I thought it meant how much the water goes up and down the beach.  Duh!  As all you more educated people will know, the fall of 14 - 24 feet is the VERTICAL amount that the tide comes in and out.  So the pier here (at low tide) is over 14 feet above the water level.  That is a hell of a lot of water.  That is why at the reversing falls in St John, each day, with the 2 tide changes there is over 100 billion tonnes of water coming in and out, more than all the rivers flow in the world each day.  Glad I learned about that one!!!

Me at lovely Camden, Maine

Camden,Maine.  Very beautiful, but huge tourism.  Originally a very prosperous ship building, sea faring, exporting, fishing, milling town (lumber and grain), when the railroad came into existence it lost a lot of its power.  Very wealthy town nonethless.  Then the 'summer' residents discovered the town.  Although lovely, for an extra 100 mile drive, we would much rather go to Bar Harbor!!

One of the eight WindJammers at Camden, Maine.  Can book a ride on one for 2 hours, for $30. These were the type of boats originally built here. We didn't have time to take the tour, but thought it would have been good value.

Today it was raining when we set off this morning from our horrible campground. We have learned our lesson now. This was the second campground that we stayed in that wasn't in an official guide.  Both were disasters!  The facilities were terrible, it was an RV camp and even then quite empty. We are working out how to camp, most of the campgrounds are 2 - 5 mils (3.5 - 8km) out of town.  This means that we have to purchase our groceries for dinner before we get out there, as there are no places to eat at the campgrounds.  We have got organised and are carrying cereal for breakfast, but have to buy milk each night for the next morning. Keeping it cold on the hot nights is a challenge.  But then again, it seems to have so many preservatives in it, I don't know if it matters!

 Photos of the intrepid riders.  All our camping gear was wet, and so were we!  Thunderstorms started in the middle of the night and it was still raining quite hard when we packed up, so we used the laundry to have our breakfast and pack everything properly!

Fortunately, after less than 1 hour of riding, the sun came out, and we ended up having a hot day.  Great, as this afternoon, we have been able to clean up all the gear.  The bikes, panniers and everything got filthy dirty.

The campsites are increasingly dirt bases and not grass, which makes everything dirtier.

HWe had an interesting ride today, only 60km, yesterday 68.5km.  The ride seemed to start off well, then we got tireder and tireder and the hills seemed to keep on coming.  We are so much better at hills, actually nearly experts (Peter is Alberto Contador, and as he passes me going up hills, he commentates about me being Andy Schleck (Tour de France experts for the not in the know), I'd rather be Schleck (my favourite rider), Contador has been accused of being a drug cheat.

But we took a back road through Waldeboro, and those were long, steep hills, but we managed them.  Think we have worked out why we are getting tireder, we have had very few carbs in the last few days. BUT, we have also managed to have no fries since July 4th - that will probably change tonight!

Lots of interesting observations. I'll write a blog dedicated to them and post it when I have got them all down!  Its not 6.40pm and the restaurant across the road (its there or McDonalds) closes at 8pm, so we better go!!!