After spending a couple of weeks in the gorgeous Cobscook area I moved about 25 miles south.
The Harrington area, located about mid-way between Acadia National Park and the Canadian Border is blueberry country and the migrant farm workers were moving in as the harvest was just getting underway. Most of them were Hispanics from Florida or Indians from Prince Edward Island in Canada. Everyone was pretty quiet and friendly and concentrating on getting work. I did get quite a dose of Latino music though.
It seems as though every other home in this area has an old derelict lobster boat in the front yard. It's either being restored or just there for decoration, I dunno which.
The coastline in this area is somewhat similar to Casco Bay farther south in Maine in that it is made up of several rivers, necks, bays and islands. This extends the paddling area from 20-30 miles to several hundred. The rivers have more development than the islands and this is only moderate. There are many pretty islands in the bays, some with fairly rugged shorelines and little development on them.
Ripley Neck is between the Harrington and Pleasant Rivers in Harrington, Maine. The public ramp is a long and a very steep one at low tide. I put in there once at dead low tide and found well over a thousand red starfish at the bottom of the ramp, some in the water, many out of the water clinging to exposed rocks. There was an abundance of baby mussels in the immediate vicinity. A local lobsterman thought adult starfish might have moved in to feed on the mussels and then spawned there and with all the food available, the baby starfish stayed right there. I don't know when they breed or how fast they grow but most of the starfish were in the 3-5 inch range.
This is a pretty paddling area without the monstrous tides of farther north. The tide range is 10-12 feet here but some of the rivers and upper bays and coves still empty out into nothing but mud flats.
I guess I had about 10 eagle sightings in 3 or 4 trips. I only saw a few seals and those were in the water. The exception to this was Great Waas Island in Jonesport, Maine, little farther up the coast. A circumnavigation of Great Waas and Beals Island would be about 15 miles or so. On the outer coast of Great Waas I had the strangest sensation of apparently watching an entire point of land start to slide into the ocean. That's what it looked like. As if someone on the other side of the point lifted that side up and everything on my side was getting ready to slide into the water.
When my surprise and depth perception were under control, I realized it was a very large number of seals disturbed by my presence. I quickly counted off 10 seals on one end and then transposed the area they took up across the point and came up with about 200 seals on the move. I headed out to sea to avoid distressing them any more and when I rounded the point I saw another 50 or so on the other side. Quite a large number, for me at least.
Great Waas is a trip well worth doing. The island is mostly uninhabited and appears to be one mighty big hunk of pink granite with cliffs in the 20 foot range. You'll see the occasional rock cairn along the way marking the hiking trails along the coast.
Unlike most of the Maine coast where you can see how the glaciers uprooted much of the rock formations, Great Waas seems to have been undisturbed. All of the formations seem as if they are still in their natural positions.
There are a number of smaller islands nearby that are miniature versions of Great Waas. There are few beaches and landing spots as most of the shorelines are very steep. I had to have lunch by doing a seal landing on some seaweed covered rocks.
After a couple of weeks, I moved down into the Schoodic Peninsula area across Frenchman's Bay and the Cadillac Cliffs on Mount Desert Island. Schoodic Peninsula, part of Mount Desert Island and Isle Au Haut make up the Acadia National Park system.
Only the lower part of the peninsula is included in the National Park system. The park consists of a 6-7 mile loop road that goes along the peninsula coast, which is really rugged the entire loop. The point consists of huge slabs of pink granite interspersed with vertical slabs of black basalt that forced itself up through the granite way back when. The point is about 0.25-0.50 miles wide (long?) that sticks out about 100-150 feet so the Atlantic Ocean can constantly pound against it. During some storms, larger waves spray up to 40 feet in the air. I saw some shooting 15-20 feet in the air during some relatively mild weather with 3 foot surges. Tour boats & fishing boats hang out on Schoodic Point point quite a bit.
I paddled a total of 4 days in the area, 2 of which were in almost total fog. I went around (back and forth) the point twice, once in the fog, once in sunshine with no seas. There was some chop on the return trip on the foggy day but just enough to get your attention.
The foggy days I just paddled along the coast, first on one side of the peninsula then on the other and both trips were great. Pink granite rock formations cover almost the entire coast. They range from 10-15 feet in some areas up to 20-25 feet in others. The waves pound the coast over and over back along the coast from the point for about 0.25-0.50 miles. It was pretty eerie seeing waves and cliffs materialize out of the fog and quite interesting.
One of the days of sunshine I paddled out into Frenchman's Bay, hoping to see some porpoises or Minke whales but no such luck this time. Minke are one of the smaller whales that range from 15-30 feet in length and weigh around 11 tons.
I didn't see any whales but I did find Ironbound Island, a beautiful cliff bound island about in the middle of the bay. I didn't have time to go completely around it but what I saw was really wonderful with 50-75 foot cliffs that appeared to contain iron because there were, what appeared to be, large rust spots in places. Honest. I will definitely do that trip again from Mount Desert Island and I will definitely be going back to Schoodic Peninsula.
From here I will be heading over to Mount Desert Island, probably the northern waters first, then the southern area followed by the east and west coasts. I expect to be the 3-4 weeks and if the old body holds up, will hike some of the mountain trails on the island.