2014 Harley Ride: Day One

Day One of our 2014 adventure is in the books.

We left Massachusetts under suspicious skies, but luckily, the threat of rain never materialized.  This ride was a year of firsts – first on the new Harley, first time the ride originated in Massachusetts and the first time we’ve headed north instead of south.

Today’s destination was Bar Harbor, Maine and dinner at Stewman’s Lobster Pound. The road to the promised land  - at least to the promised lobster – was Route 1. We traversed the Bay State and hugged the Maine coastline, skirting any hint of bad weather and sailing with the sea breezes.

Route 1 was littered with Victorian era homes transformed into B&Bs or antique stores.  Every so often we’d pass a lonely cemetery with its white limestone headstones standing stoically as reminders of lives past or meander through a Main Street town with trendy restaurants, small boutiques and a walkable downtown, like Portland, where we stopped and enjoyed lunch at the Dry Dock Tavern & Bar.

Jason loves navigating the Harley along these secondary roads, listening to me sigh as the antique stores pass by. There’s no place to put anything, packing for 2 weeks is challenge enough, but the only thing I can get at an old roadside cemetery are pictures. I don’t usually ask to stop, because it’s too easy for me to get caught up in the genealogy, but there were just so many of them today, I couldn’t resist.  I spied a collection of leaning headstones and asked to stop. The yard wasn’t marked, so all I know about it for now, other than the names of the interred, is that we were in Verona, Maine, just outside of Bucksport. I scrambled up the small grassy incline and surveyed the small collection of headstones, some ramrod straight, others leaning and broken. Some weathered and illegible, others with crisp details chiseled into smooth granite.

After a 15-minute fix, I was back on the bike and we were back on the road.

Bar Harbor and its rugged coastal landscape is home to Cadillac Mountain—part of neighboring Acadia National Park. The first settlement in the area was recorded in 1761 by Abraham Somes, a sailor and fisherman from Massachusetts.  In 1855, the first hotel, Agamont House, and the first wharf were built. Even back then, Bar Harbor was a place of inspiration for many people. That tradition continues today. Bar Harbor is beautiful, but after 8 hour on the bike, what inspired me was lobster.

You can’t go to Maine and not have lobster. Our dinner at Stewman’s started with appetizers  - a blueberry margarita, a slightly pink, perfectly sweet libation garnished with a slice of lime for me and a Sam Adams for Jason. We both opted for the Downeast Lobster Experience Dinner – steamed lobster, mussels, corn and potatoes with the obligatory drawn butter. And for dessert, blueberry pie.  Yum.

And now - yawn. It's been a long day and another one is scheduled for tomorrow as we head on to New Brunswick, Canada.

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