Day 14 - The end!
Day 14 - Machias to Lubec, ME - 37 miles - 1,869 ft of elevation gain
Well, we made it to the end, the easternmost point in the United States, Quoddy Head State Park. I’m currently sitting on my balcony in shorts and a long-sleeved top with a blanket trying to start the recap of the day, but the sunset is just too amazing! My neighbors in this hotel/house thing are waking up at 3am to head to Boston to catch their flight, she made sure to tell me they were going to bed at 7pm. So I’m keeping my lounge chair reclined to not make too much noise, but that means every time I get up to take a picture of the sunset, I risk flipping the chair and making more noise than simply releasing the lounge. You can’t say I don’t live life on the edge of a fall!
Our hotel in Machias did not have breakfast, so we finished the cereal and most of the pop tarts, and whatever else was in the trailer that could pass as breakfast food. Since our mileage wasn’t going to be crazy, we didn’t need to load up on too much. Our goal was to pull out at 9am to give everyone a little extra time to catch some sleep before the final push, I think we missed the mark by a few minutes. The sun came out as we were getting ready to leave and it was HOT, I broke into a sweat just waiting to pull out of the parking lot. But once we were on the road, the temps cooled off and the sun went under the clouds. It was a cool 70 for the rest of the day.
Our route took us along route 1 until about mile 15, then we turned towards Lubec and the Quoddy Head State Park. This section of route 1 was rolling, with 3 registered climbs, and the continued battle with the shoulder width. We passed several areas of pine forests, and the smell of them is fuel for the lungs (actually there have been pine forests throughout the last week). I was keeping an eye out for a moose when we would approach a boggy area, but alas they have remained elusive.
Once we turned off of route 1, we were one winding roads through the countryside. There wasn’t too much traffic, which was good because there was no shoulder. We stopped just before Lubec to get a picture of each team member by the sign (these are posted on Facebook). On our final turn, it was about 4.5 miles to the light house in the Quoddy Head State Park. At the park, we loaded up the bikes for safekeeping, and went exploring. The tide was just starting to head out, so we could crawl around on the rocks after we did the obligatory pictures at the light house.
Lunch was at the park, and we brought the grill down to make our sandwiches hot! The boys were hungry, because they cleaned out the sandwich meat and cheese. I can’t tell you how good my turkey, cheese, and pickles sandwich was hot off of the grill. These boys deserved every bite of that food.
We have completed 853 miles and 41,174 ft of elevation gain. To put that into perspective, Everest is just over 29,000 ft. And last summer we pedaled 3,700 miles and had 106,000 ft of elevation gain, so that tells you how hilly this route in the northeast is compared to the route from Oregon to Delaware. Either way, my legs know we did a lot of climbing, and they will feel the after-burn for a few days to come.
Our route, color coded by each day’s ride!
Several of the guys wanted souvenirs, so we wondered the single street and found a small shop that satisfied almost everyone’s list. We came back to our hotel for dinner, which seemed to be one of the only places to eat in town. I talked with my hotel neighbor, who grew up in this area, and she said that the town is very depressed from when she lived here. Dinner took a long time to come to our table, so we had devotions right after everyone finished eating. Then we stepped outside to take in the view. That’s when I made my way up the hill to my house/hotel room and got distracted by the sky instead of writing this post.
Now, I’m hoping to catch the stars before going to bed. We are trying to hit the sunrise at 5:30am, because this is the first place in America to see that big ball of blazing fire light the sky. After the sunrise, it will be back to the hotel to pack up and hit the road, only in a van this time!
