Misty Memorial Day Morning in Maine

I got around a little late this morning. My host treated me to a wonderful breakfast, including some homemade scones that I was given a couple of to take with me for lunch. I didn't get on the road until nearly 9, after talking with my host just last night about how I've been getting around too late. I biked out in the misty Maine morning, wearing my rain jacket and winter gloves against the cold. I went right back down the hill I'd gone up yesterday so that I could head back into Camden and see the harbor I had passed by yesterday in my hurry to be done for the day. I saw the tail end of a Memorial Day ceremony and the preparations for the parade, and then hightailed it out of town before the parade could make escape difficult.

Thankfully, highway 1's shoulder, which I was again on most the day, got much better again, and remained so basically all day. The only time it was really ugly was when the whole road was torn up at one point and the highway was rough gravel. I passed through lots of little coastal (and slightly inland on rivers to the ocean) towns. I didn't get off the highway (save for a brief detour to little Nobleboro), until I reached Bath, where the traffic really picked up. There I was able to get off onto the East Coast Greenway route, which despite a (literally) rocky start where things were all tore up, I was actually fairly impressed with at how well it routed me on nice side roads around the major traffic. For a time it set me on a nice trail, and after that it had me on a stretch of highway whose shoulder actually called itself a bike lane.

I got to my host's just before 5. He's a very interesting guy. Through Couchsurfing, he's had more than a hundred guests here at the house he's long term house-sitting for a friend. I added my pin to his map, the first for Lincoln, Nebraska, though he had one from Omaha. He hasn't traveled much himself, but between his many guests and his time driving Lyft and Uber (a job he takes alongside working for LL Bean and the Red Cross, and being back in school to finish his degree), he has no end of interesting stories. Tonight his house has been full of guests, his kids and spouses, people he knows from a camp, and of course, a wayward cyclist. Tacos were made and eaten, over which many stories were shared. I've gotten no lack of socializing for the evening.