Good Morning, U.S.A.!

A view of the sunrise from West Quoddy Head Lighthouse, the easternmost point in the U.S..

After a very late night of driving, we arrived at our motel in Lubec, ME at around 2AM. Jami hopped out of the driver's seat at about 1AM at Cherryfield, ME at the junction of hwy 193 and hwy 1. I finished the drive from Cherryfield to Lubec. The road was extremely winding, isolated, and lined heavily with large trees most of the way. The eerie part of the drive came when we approached the ocean and the trees would clear out around bays and rivers. Since it was dark we couldn't see anything except the light fog covered road. Spooky. Very appropriate for the Halloween season.

When we arrived at our motel, we almost immediately went to sleep,

Approaching the West Quoddy Head lighthouse.

but not before setting our alarms for 6AM so we could wake up and be the first to see the sunrise! After a long (not!) night's sleep we headed out towards the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse, home of the easternmost point in the United States. The drive from Lubec to the lighthouse was awesome, especially now that we had some of the early light of dawn from the approaching sunrise. West Quoddy Head road winds through Quoddy Head state park and ends at the lighthouse. We parked and headed down the trail to the edge of land. There was quite a bit of sunlight peeking over the horizon so at first we thought we were going to miss it but ended up having perfect timing, arriving about 20 minutes before the sunrise. The view was well worth the effort to get there. Fishing ships were already out trolling around and the small amount of sunlight provided a very picturesque view of the horizon and surrounding islands. We spent quite awhile wandering around the lighthouse taking in the moment. We took lots of photos and found the easternmost point marker. Surprisingly, we weren't the only ones there! A couple from Deleware joined us a bit after we arrived. We took some last looks at the gorgeous view and headed back to the motel to pick up our luggage and grab some breakfast. It was a small privately owned hotel and the owner had baked homemade blueberry muffins that were fresh out of the oven!

In front of the bridge near Fort Knox (in true Maine, full-flannel spirit).

We headed back on the long windy roads leading down the coast. Even though we're traveling through Maine after the peak foliage season there's still an abundant amount of fall colors and great views. We stopped at several lookout points, including at Fort Knox (not the one with the gold bricks). Near Fort Knox there was a pretty cool bridge that we stopped to take pictures at. At many of the rivers near the coast you could look out and see where it emptied into the ocean along with the local ships and boats in the distance. Very cool.


Since we were in Maine, we stopped along the way and had some lobster! Amy was the only one out of the four of us who had eaten lobster so she had to show us how it's done. We all agreed it was well worth the work to get to the good stuff, even though Jami was a bit creeped out by Gilbert (I named our lobster).


 We're currently still on the road, headed for The Big Apple. We'll be driving through the city tonight and staying in Newark, NJ. We plan on taking the train into the city much like we did in Boston and seeing several sites tomorrow.