53 miles. Yep, more hills but the last day before Bar Harbor.

First I want to say that without Maja by my side I would not have made it out of the state of Washington. Her energy and spirit inspires me every mile. I can safely say there is no other person on the planet with whom I could spend every waking moment for 80 days and still be joyful. I would hate me if I had to spend 80 days with myself! She encouraged me in the gloomy moments when all I wanted to do was stop pedaling and sit down by the road and cry. Every day, almost every hour on a journey like this presents its own challenges and Maja helped me meet them all. To quote Fat Boy Slim, “I have to praise you like I should.”

Last night we walked the mile or so into Damariscotta and had a very good meal at the King Eider’s Pub. As we ate, the rain began so we managed to find a taxi to take us back to the DownEaster Inn. This morning we had to backtrack about 1.5 miles from there to get back on our route where we spent some miles riding on Route 1 with the expected tourist and truck traffic so were glad to get off that highway on to local roads. They were less busy but offered little in the way of shoulders and were steeper climbing.

We had a few ocean views to entertain us and the weather was alternately cloudy and sunny.

We rolled into Searsport, home of sea captains and boat builders with some impressive homes from the late 1800s.

Stopping at The Brick House for a late lunch we pedaled up the hill to The Yardarm, our last hotel on the road. Tomorrow will be Bar Harbor and the ceremonial riding into the Atlantic – from sea to shining sea.