Down East

We are at the Cobscook Bay State Park (map), off US-1 just north of Whiting, Maine. We have a lovely site right on the water, which right here is Whiting Bay. Whiting Bay empties into Cobscook Bay, which in turn empties into the Bay of Fundy.

When I say "empties," boy does it empty. The tidal swing here is 24'; we arrived near high tide and the water came right up to the edge of our site; at low tide the shoreline is several hundred feet away. In between extremes, you can actually see the current as the water rushes in or out; just a couple of miles from here (as the crow flies; it's a very long drive around the end of the bay) is a spot called "reversing falls" where the incoming or outgoing tide flows over a bar, creating a waterfall that changes direction with the tide.

The park is very wooded, and the fall color here is just past peak, so we are surrounded by yellow and orange, as well as a bit of green and some bare trees. The waterfront sites have a good shot to the satellite, though. When we arrived the host thought we wouldn't fit (the park supposedly has a 35' limit), but offered us to try for this site, #4, with a backup site that was not on the water. As usual, hosts are terrible judges of size and distance; Louise paced the whole campground and there isn't a site here that we couldn't get into; the backup site they offered us was over 200' long; we could have parked five buses there in a row.

US-1 here is now the Down East and Acadia scenic byway, and we've seen signs to that effect since turning southwest at Perry, near the mouth of the St. Croix River. Our drive south from Houlton was colorful and afforded an occasional glimpse of the river. Now that we are on the coast, we are officially "down east." Today we will continue along the coast, with some diversions from US-1 to more coastal roads, until we reach Ellsworth, where we will turn south and head to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island. It is the Friday before Columbus Day weekend, and we have our fingers crossed that we can still get a site in the lone campground still open in the park. We also have our fingers crosses that the rain holds off, as forecast, until our arrival, as we now have no working wipers.