Maine - Day 1

Bangor/Holden KOA

Wednesday, 1 August 2018

today's

route

I learned while I was in northern NH that there’s debate within the state as to what constitutes the North Country, but many older New Hampshirites agree it’s “above the notches.”  And I now know what that means.  On my first day in NH I came through Franconia Notch in the White Mountains.  A few days ago on my way up to Pittsburg, I passed through Jefferson Notch along the north edge of the White Mountains.  Today, on my way to Maine, I passed through Dixville Notch – the most harrowing of them all, which I didn’t expect. 

On the map, it just looked like as direct a route as I could find from far north NH into Maine.
In reality, the road was something like a roller coaster.  It wasn’t just that a highway sign warned of a 10% grade – I’m starting to get used to that.  The problem was that the road went straight up and, with nary a pause at the top, it went straight down again – like a roller coaster.  My stomach stayed up at the top and took a while to catch up.  Anyway, north of that, where I’d been staying, was “above the notches” so I’ve now by any definition been to NH’s North Country.

Androscoggin River

The road through Dixville Notch is state route 26 and it pauses at a tiny town called Errol before it runs by the south end of Umbagog Lake (straddling the NH/ME border) and on into Maine.  Somewhere near Errol is the head of the Androscoggin River, which I had been along down in Gorham and Shelburne and Randolph.  I expected to see a smallish river near Errol, but the Androscoggin was already a full-fledged river.  It runs south from Errol down to Gorham and so forth, but then turns east.  I picked it up again when ME route 26 hit US route 2 at Newry and didn’t finally say goodby to it until East Peru.  It keeps on going south, though, and I may meet it again when I’m in that part of Maine.

Welcome to Maine!

Soon after I entered Maine I saw a highway sign warning of frost heaves next 2 miles.  I haven’t heard anybody mention frost heaves since I left Alaska and I was skeptical as the road had been recently repaved and looked fine.  But they were right.  Frost heaves.  The ones I’m used to were caused by uneven freezing and thawing of the road bed in the winter, resulting in a pretty bouncy ride – a careful driver will go slowly over that road to keep from bouncing around so much you lose control of the vehicle.  Turns out that’s what you do in Maine as well.

I passed a large building with a large parking lot and a sign saying Maine Made Furniture – Woodworker’s Paradise.  If I hadn’t had so far to go today I’d have stopped to see what they had.  And maybe I’ll be back up there again before the month’s over.

In front of a public meeting house I saw a large sign alerting everyone of an upcoming Public Suppah on Saturday.

I noticed that all the towns I was passing through in Maine were settled in the 1700s, much older than those in New Hampshire.  It may be partly due to NH’s almost complete lack of ocean access, especially compared with Maine’s extensive coastline, giving settlers easier land access.

As I got closer to Bangor, I saw the towns got a lot newer – well into the 1800s.  Don’t know why towns in the western part of the state would be so much older than in the central part.

For some reason, I’m not really warming up to this campground, and they’re charging too much – even though it’s the cheapest KOA in Maine.  There are others in the area that are substantially less money, so I’ll be moving tomorrow.