Woodstock, New Brunswick

 

I concluded my five days in Maine with a trio of Carnegies in the northeast corner of the state all within twelve miles of one another.  The area also included a pair of launching sites for balloonists attempting to cross the Atlantic. I wouldn’t have known if there hadn’t been a road sign pointing towards one of them outside of Presque Isle, where I visited the first of the three Carnegies.

With it raining I didn’t care to make a detour to it, and instead let the librarian tell me what he knew of it.  He said the town has had an annual Ballon Festival the past twenty years celebrating the balloon crossings.  The first successful one came in 1978 when a trio of balloonists piloted the Double Eagle II across the ocean, which was a big international media event at the time.  Six years later someone made the first solo balloon crossing, departing from Caribou, twelve miles north, and home to another Carnegie.

The monument to that first crossing might have been more interesting than the Carnegie, as the original basic red brick building had been overwhelmed by two additions to its front side making it look more like a medical facility or retirement home than a library.  At least a painting of the library in its former glory paid it homage.

It was a bit sad to see it’s forlorn backside jutting out from its addition

The next two Carnegies made up for the desecration of Presque Isle.  Their additions were to their backsides and weren’t detectable.  The Caribou library didn’t have Saturday hours so I couldn’t inquire if I were far enough north for there to be caribou in the vicinity.  

It had felt like Alaska at times when I was on a forty-mile stretch between towns the day before leading into Houlton as hardly more than a dozen vehicles passed, partially thanks to a nearby interstate.  Wikipedia offered no answer to the caribou question other than that the town had originally been named Lyndon in 1869 with the residents going back and forth several times between the two names before settling on Caribou in 1877.  Wikipedia acknowledged there was no explanation for why.

The librarian in Fort Fairfield couldn’t tell me if caribou once roamed in these parts, just that someone had bison and a few had been on the loose a couple of years ago.  She showed me a back room that was filled with old books on the Civil War donated by the son of the guy who had collected them decades ago.  A plaque above the fireplace paid tribute to the battleship Maine sunk in the Spanish-American war in 1898.

It was just two miles to Canada.  I asked the librarian if she had much occasion to venture over. She’d been just once since the border had been reopened a year ago to visit a botanical garden.  

I knew Canada was nearby as for the past seventy-five miles after I reached Houlton just across the border I had been seeing bright red Tim Horton cups of the nation’s most popular fast food franchise. 

Houlton offered a Carnegie of native stone that sat at one end of a large park.  Its addition to its backside did not mar one’s view of fhe frontside.  The forty miles north to Presque Isle was through an agricultural corridor of potatoes, pumpkins and squash.  There were still pumpkins to be harvested.

Unlike a year ago when I crossed into Canada in Minnesota, I wasn’t summoned inside for an interrogation before being let in.  I straddled my bike replying in the negative to all the questions of whether I was transporting alcohol or tobacco or cannabis or a firearm or if I had ever been convicted of a crime or if I was bringing anything into the country I intended to leave there.  I was glad not to be asked if I was bringing in any food, as I would have hated to be denied my bananas and bread and nuts and dates and pretzels.  Good too she didn’t care to peruse my panniers, as there’s no telling what she would have made of my license plate collection, now up to five after two more in Maine, one for me and one for Dwight.  

The agent advised me to go south after crossing the border on the old trans-Canada road paralleling the new superhighway rather than heading east through the interior, as she said there were few towns and lots of logging trucks and the terrain was very hilly.  It was to my advantage to be going south as a northerly was predicted for the next day, dropping the temperatures to the thirties for the first time this fall.  She said it would be cold camping and fortunately didn’t object that I intended to camp and not at sanctioned campgrounds.

The southern route followed the wide Saint John River with roads on either side and few bridges crossing it. I had the road on the west side pretty much to myself while I had occasional glimpses of 18-wheelers and other vehicles on the busy highway to my right.  The road wasn’t as flat as I would have liked, but at least the climbs were gradual and gave me easy pedaling on their downsides.