Year 1 - Ride Day 1 - Calais ME to Millbridge ME - Sept 1

Started Day One on nice roads that were less traveled. As we progressed toward the 20 mile mark, the roads were primarily one lane country roads. Very enjoyable!

The ECG route then turns onto the Down East Sunrise Trail. Our plan to follow the ECG path would have had us riding this trail for about 50 miles with a stop for lunch at Machias at roughly the 27 mile mark (for our route).

The trail follows the former Maine Central Railroad rail base. The trail has some nice scenery as it traverses the lakes and blueberry bogs. But for all of its positive aspects, we firmly believe that this trail should not be part of the ECG path. Some of the trail is firmly packed gravel and ground which makes for acceptable trail riding on a loaded touring bike, but the majority of the trail is large loose stones, gravel and sand. This makes for treacherous riding with a top heavy, loaded touring bike. Additionally, there are many bridges along the trail. Most of the bridges are in disrepair with damaged or missing boards and washed out entrances and exits. The last several miles, for us, as we rode into Machias, was loose gravel and sand, making bicycle riding very difficult. 

We in no way want to speak badly about this trail or the trail organization. We are sure that they are doing their best with the available resources. In fact, we passed a person and tractor mowing the sides of the trail to keep it from overgrowing. We just believe that is unacceptable for loaded touring bike travel! The trail is better suited for bikes with tires that are 2” wide or greater such as mountain bikes. We suggest the ECG organization take a good hard look at using this trail for the ECG path in the future. 

When we stopped for lunch a Helen’s in Machias, we rerouted the remaining Sunrise Trail miles onto Route 1 and Route 1A. This did result in a 5 mile reduction for the day. We arrived at the Red Barn Motel about 5:30 pm.

We enjoyed a light dinner at a restaurant called 44 degrees North as that is the longitude close to this location. After dinner we walked a couple more blocks “downtown” to the laundromat and did a load.

Over dinner we began to check on the ferry departure times. The weather for the next day, Thursday Sept 2, was to be heavy rains caused by the remains of Ida as it goes out to sea. We were hoping that we could delay our hotel departure until the rain let up in the early afternoon. Although the ferry normally runs daily at approximately 10, 12, 2, and 4, as we checked the reservation schedule on the Web, we noted that we were unable to reserve a ferry ride till Saturday. Could we have made an error by not making a ferry reservation weeks ago? I called the ferry operator and was informed that the ferry was in the shop for repairs and might not even be done by Saturday. 

Now what? Reroute? With the impending rain forecast that would dispel any thoughts of riding around Acadia and unable to get to Bar Harbor via the ferry, we immediately began to look at the maps. We were going to be riding to Ellsworth anyway from Mount Desert Island, so rerouting to Ellsworth was the obvious redirect. 

Now the question remains, bike ride or? The West bus, the same one we rode to Calais, actually has a stop in Millbridge and one of the next stops is Ellsworth. With the rain not forecasted to stop until mid to late afternoon, bus it will be. We eventually learned that this was a good choice because the rain persisted until late in the day, the wind was very strong, and the temps were hovering in the high 50’s. This would have made for a less than great experience!

We called the bus company to ensure the driver would stop there for us.

While waiting for our clothes, we cancelled our original hotel reservations near Bar Harbor and made new reservations in Ellsworth. 

Note that in some of the pictures the water level is low. This is due to us being close to the ocean so in these tidal flats areas the river levels are greatly affected by the tide. It was almost low tide when these pictures were taken.