The Bicycle Adventure Club - Come Ride With Us!

Coast of Maine 2023

September 5th to September 19th

Ride Director: Julie Leever
Ride Co-Director: Tom Leever
Report by: Jim McKinley

The Coast of Maine is a geographic wonder. In the recent Ice Age, ice scoured the land, and when it melted, the sea rose and drowned the shore. We’re left with a ragged, beautiful island-specked coastline. The terrain looked gentle, but it was real work to cover the day’s miles. The roads meandered through the woods with short, repeating ‘ups’ and matching ‘downs’.

The buildings stand out. The state is largely rural but the coast has been well-populated since colonial days, so multiple cultural transformations are overprinted one upon another. The houses adapted to tastes over time, but all have steep roof profiles to handle winter snow. In places, the old boxy houses were expanded by additions into sprawling structures reminiscent of Andrew Wyeth paintings. (We visited the Wyeth Museum in Farnsworth.) The modern houses are typically shingled, preserving the old style. Houses of all ages are painted a charming yellow-ochre or pail grey.

It's got quirks. The Dahlias were in full bloom, and there were stands offering them for sale on the honor system. The abundance of chickens was a surprise, standing in yards and roadsides with the typical chicken look: upright and skeptical. A house in every dozen had a sign, ‘eggs for sale’. Away from the towns, the Maine Woods are quiet and close to the road. It seemed that whenever I had occasion to stop and step into them, I found something: a rusting hulk of a machine; a stone foundation; a wall marking an old boundary. There wasn’t much litter along the roads, but the roadsides were dotted with, of all things, airline booze bottles.

The hotels varied in a nice way. The ride started with several back-to-back days of riding between stops, then changed to two-night stops with optional rides on the restful days, and ended with three nights in Bar Harbor. Our accommodations included a couple of motels (charming mom-and-pop operations), hotels and inns in the town centers, and a historic resort. One inn had a grate with a log fire on the back patio, with the makings of s’mores just inside the back door. We arrived in Bar Harbor just in time to enjoy Hurricane Lee. It amounted to a night and day of wind and rain, providing a well-deserved rest day at the Bar Harbor Resort and Hotel. There was a day left to ride through the spectacular Acadia National Park.

The riding part. The days weren’t exceptionally long and the climbing was moderate, all as indicated by the 3B rating, but the effects of repeated easy climbs were noticeable. The roads were mostly low-traffic, with a few stretches of riding on tertiary highways when the sweeping shoreline restricted alternatives. There was a novel venture onto a dirt and gravel road. The weather was fine, except when it wasn’t: we had rain on two days when we weren’t required to ride. The last-day ride through Acadia NP was grand.

The logistics. Tom and Julie have led this ride eight times, and have the logistics well-tuned. They knew what to expect at each stop; the happy hours were efficiently run; and little glitches along the way were handled well and without drama. At the end of the trip, we rode a well-appointed bus back to the start, with a truck stop mid-way.