Here’s the blog you’ve been
waiting for! Part 1 of unknown of our
honeymoon adventure!
We left Sunday morning 15th
heading north making our first stop at Bagel Central in Bangor for a delicious
bagel breakfast and we pick up a dozen of our favorites to bring with us. We left the interstate at exit 264 and
continued north on Route 11 until we finally reached Fort Kent! We made excellent time.
In Fort Kent we checked out the
Fort Kent Blockhouse and the Route 1 monument that signifies the beginning of
US Route 1 which stretches all the way down to the Florida Keys. Kate has now had her photo taken at both
monuments!
We made our way to Lakeview
Campground in St Agatha (pronounced A-gath) and set up our site. We did a great job too! It’s a nice campground we got a site with
electrical hook up for my cpap machine.
They had very nice showers and bathrooms. The only downside to tenting this night was
that it rained and the wind was pretty intense. It let up in the morning long enough for us
to get pack up and get in the van.
However, Sunday night we went to
the Skylite Drive In in Madawaska!! I will call this my first time ever going,
my mom will say that she took us when I was a kid but I don’t remember going so
it doesn’t count. We saw R.I.P.D.
starring Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges it was great! You could either listen to it on 88.5fm or
they had the old style speaker boxes. We
opted for the speaker box, going old school!!
We went into the concession
stand and spoke with the owner’s wife and son.
Very nice people, it’s rather sad as this is the 40th year
that the drive-in has been in business and it will probably be its last. With the movie industry switching from 35mm
prints to digital it requires both theaters and drive in’s alike to upgrade to
a digital projector at $80,000 each.
Sadly they can’t afford it and many other small theaters can’t either. Recently the Saco Drive In won a projector
from Honda who had a contest to give away 5 projectors to drive in’s. Because of this change many theaters are
closing including the Century Theater in Fort Kent. This same family also owns the Fox Theater in
Madawaska and said they will be putting it for sale. It’s a damn shame that people like this and
many others are losing their lively hoods because of a technology change.
I asked them if they had any
magnets or other souvenirs for sale, she said no but she saw a 40 year old
bumper sticker under the counter the other day.
After a brief search she came up with it, it looks brand new, and gave
it to me! Her son laughed and asked, has
that been under their the whole time? It was so nice of her!
Monday morning we made our way
south on Route 1 and had breakfast at Dolly’s.
The Acadian region is known for their regional food Ployes, and the
great people at the Skylite recommended Dolly’s. Sadly though they don’t usually start serving
them until 830am and it was only 7am.
However, our waitress Sylvia took pity on us and fired up the hot plate.
Ployes are a made with buckwheat
and the thickness is between a crepe and a pancake. You only cook them on one side until done and
they are eaten traditionally rolled with either butter, maple syrup, or
molasses. We each got an order of 3 and
had one each way. We both preferred the
molasses.
Our waitress Sylvia was wicked
nice and after explaining to her our honeymoon plans she referred us to a place
in Ellsworth called Sylvia’s Café that she owned for 20 years before selling it
to the head cook. She said to ask for
Pat and that Sylvia sent us.
We traveled along route 1
stopping to photograph some beautiful churches until we entered Canada for the first
time in Van Buren. It was Kate’s first
time in Canada and my first time since my French Club trip my senior year in
high school.
We visited Grand Falls which is
beautiful and needs to be seen to truly appreciate it. Pictures can only do so much.
We came back into the US and at customs had to surrender our contraband
cherry tomatoes in order to enter the country.
We continued south stopping in Caribou at Burger Boy, a classic 1950’s
burger joint. I got a Whistler Dog,
which is a red natural casing hot dog stuffed with cheese, wrapped in bacon,
and deep fried! Yes it tasted that
good! Kate got the regionally popular
pizza burger, a hamburger topped with pizza sauce and mozzarella cheese. It was good stuff!
We made a stop south at the Fort
Fairfield blockhouse and enjoyed the Windmill Farm at Mars Hill. Some of you may not know this but Northern
Maine has a small Amish Population and we saw on riding her buggy down the
roadway. At my urging Kate took a photo,
which angered the young lady. I will add
that Kate didn’t want to do it.
We crossed back into Canada and
stopped in Florence-Bristol at Potato World.
We has some real poutin made with cheese curd and not shredded cheese
like every place else that advertised it.
Apparently McCain is a Canadian company founded right in Florence-Bristol
, New Brunswick.
Our next stop was Hartland, New
Brunswick home of the World’s Longest Covered Bridge, 1,292 feet! It’s a impressive site to see people patient
navigate this one lane bridge. Also in
Hartland we toured the Covered Bridge Potato Chip factory. They were kind enough to cook up another
batch of chips so we could watch the process down the production line. We also got a sample bag of fresh cooked
chips that had no salt or flavoring on them.
You could eat them as they were, which was delicious, or go to the
flavor station and try many different flavors.
Because the temperature was
dropping down below freezing we decided to get a motel room and why not stay in
Canada. So we checked into the Je Sa Le
Motel in Hartland to end out 2nd day of our Honeymoon. New Brunswick is in the Atlantic time zone so
they are one hour ahead of us. Kate
didn’t think it was such a big deal to go to fall asleep at 815pm, except for
us, it was 715pm. And she was comatose!
That's all for part one, more to come!
Here's a link to the Skylite Drive in web page and facebook page
Here's the trailer to R.I.P.D.
Later Readers!
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