All Things Zebster: Downeast

If you've been following my travelogues, you know that what has precipitated some of these trips around Maine is that we (Shelly and I) picked up a State Park Passport, a little booklet that has the State Parks divided by regions of the State with a place to get each park stamped when you visit. You may also know that Shelly loves lighthouses...in fact, has a tattoo on her foot of the West Quoddy Light, even though she'd never seen it in person.
Well, there are five State Parks in what is referred to as Downeast Maine. So we decided to make a weekend of collecting those five and visit some lighthouses and Campobello (you've heard of Campobello, right?) So we packed our real passports, made reservations at a B&B in Lubec for Saturday night and headed out.
I'll start at the end first: On the way home Sunday we had planned on visiting the last two State Parks near Machias and taking a quick detour to Prospect Harbor and Winter Harbor to see another lighthouse. Well, there's also a lighthouse on a little island just offshore in Cutler. So I decided to take the scenic route to Machias via Cutler to see if we might be able to see that lighthouse from the shore. Unfortunately, I ran over something that cut a tire, which cut the rest of our weekend off right there. So we'll have to go back down there again. No bigs since Shel would like to go whale watching anyway.
So I'm just going to write a quick outline of our tour and post a shitload of pictures in the order they were taken. Our first stop was at Cobscook State Park in Dennysville on the western shore of Cobscook Bay. Nice spot for camping and I took a couple pictures there...nothing too spectacular. Then on to Shackford Head State Park in Eastport. We hiked a half mile to the head and took a few pictures with a nice shot of Lubec across the bay. Eastport and Lubec are about three miles apart as the crow flies across the bay but 35 miles apart by car. I took a few pictures in Eastport and we had lunch at The Happy Crab...the best lobster rolls ever.
Then back around the loop through Dennysville to get to Lubec and cross the international bridge onto Campobello Island, New Brunswick. There's a lighthouse, Mulholland Light, just on the other side of the bridge where you can look back at the village of Lubec across the channel. There's also a little lighthouse right in the channel, the Lubec Channel Light aka The Sparkplug. It's a caisson style lighthouse and you'll see a couple of distant pictures of it.
We hustled to the other end of the island because to get to see East Quoddy Headlight aka East Harbour Light, you need to go at low tide because at high tide it sits on an island and you can't walk to it. This is the Bay of Fundy, where tides change by 20 feet. You'll see from the pictures what an excursion it was to get to what is arguably the prettiest lighthouse you'll ever see. You'll see pictures not only of the lighthouse but also of all the ladders, staircases, bridge and rocks you have to navigate. Every picture of a staircase is a different staircase.
Then we headed back toward Lubec, stopping for a tour of FDR's family summer "cottage." Lots of history there and well worth a trip. We then checked into our B&B and went to the village to find some grub.
The next morning we went to West Quoddy Lighthouse and walked a trail along the cliff shore. You'll get a good perspective of the rocky coast of Maine and you can see the Island of Grand Manan, NB in the background. (Maybe another trip?) You already know what happened after that. I hope you enjoy these pictures. Make sure you click into them to really appreciate how beautiful this area at the easternmost area of the United States really is.
You'll have to click the following page break to get to the pictures.