On Sunday we drove over to Eastport to check out their
Salmon Festival. Eastport is directly across the water from both Lubec
and Campobello Island. It’s about 3 miles from Lubec by water but 38
miles by land because of having to drive around the bay that separates them.
This is part of that bay at low tide. It illustrates
what I said before about the low-tide view of mud.
Eastport is bigger than Lubec and has some big and
impressive houses for a not-too-prosperous area. There were a lot of “For
Sale” signs in both towns. This must be a hard place in which to make a
living. Lubec used to have a thriving sardine industry but no more,
probably disappearing as a result of over-fishing. It was part of
Eastport when it was founded in 1775, but was split off on its own in
1811. Once roads were built it made better sense to separate them.
Eastport’s little harbor area at low tide. Very long
gangplanks to floating docks are a necessity.
Andrew’s Brewing Company was set up for the festival in
front of this statue with their banner obscuring whatever was written under
it. Probably in honor of Eastport’s almost 250 years of fishermen.
Everything around here is all about the sea and seafood.
Here’s one thing that’s not about seafood……a portable pizza
oven set up at the Salmon Festival! What a neat idea. The canopy in
front covers the trailer tongue.
We missed the tour to the salmon pens. After we’d
already eaten in a restaurant (because the grilled salmon dinner area was so
crowded) we discovered the only way to get on the tour was by buying a ticket
to the dinner. Phooey.
We did get to see salmon net pens which were close to the
beach at the Roosevelt Cottage on Campobello but it’s not the same as being
right next to them where you can see the fish. Tens of thousands of
salmon are farmed in these circular pens which are connected to each other in
groups. Young salmon are raised in a freshwater hatchery and moved to the
pens to grow into adults of 8 to 11 pounds which takes about 18 months.
The harvested fish are processed locally and are a big part of the economy
here.
Monday we went across the FDR Bridge onto Campobello Island
which is in Canada. The Roosevelt-Campobello International Park is a
living memorial to Franklin and Eleanor, a joint project of the U.S. and
Canada, and the first and only one of its kind. A resort business was
started on the island in the 1880’s by a consortium of wealthy businessmen from
Boston and New York. It catered to the rich who came here to escape the
summer heat in cities to the south. James and Sara Delano Roosevelt were among
those summer visitors who fell in love with the place, bought land and built
their own cottages. FDR spent his summers at Campobello from earliest
childhood (born in 1882) until he contracted polio here in 1921. He
returned only four times after that. Eleanor and the children continued
to summer here for many more years.
The original Roosevelt Cottage built by James and Sara was
dismantled decades ago after it fell into a state of disrepair. Years
before that what became known as the Roosevelt Cottage belonged to their
neighbor. She made provisions in her will to offer the place to Sara
Roosevelt for Franklin and Eleanor’s use for the selling price of $5000.
She had paid $4500 for the undeveloped property, then built and completely
furnished the house for herself, but she wanted Franklin to have it so made
Sara an offer she couldn’t refuse. Sara owned it until her death although
she continued to live in her own place next door. She was an extremely
controlling mother.
The “cottage” with its 12 bedrooms which included six for
guests and servants. Franklin and Eleanor had five surviving children
(one died very young) so they needed six bedrooms for the family.
The master bedroom.
I was impressed with seeing that the servants’ rooms looked
just like the children’s rooms…..all comfortable but nothing fancy. This
was a place where the Roosevelts could be a regular family, at least as much as
extraordinary people can be “regular.” (“Regular families” don’t have
servants or spend their summers in such places.) Eleanor had a gigantic
bullhorn which she used for calling the children in from the woods and water
for meals. She wasn’t an upper-crust kind of person in spite of her
family connections (being Teddy Roosevelt’s niece). What mattered to her
were other people and doing whatever she could to improve the lives of
others. She never asked anyone to do something she wasn’t willing to do
herself. On one occasion she opened the house to a group of about 20
people for something like an educational conference which would last for
several weeks. (I can’t remember the details of why they were
coming.) She realized they didn’t have enough beds so borrowed beds from
island residents. Then she realized they didn’t have enough bed linens so
went over to Eastport by boat, bought bolts of fabric and made the bedding
herself.
The dining room. All the wallpaper in the house has
been reproduced from the original.
It’s a wonderful house with a comfortable feel and lots of
natural light. Electricity was brought to the island in 1948 but Eleanor
didn’t want it in the house. The cottage didn’t get electricity until
1952 when it was sold to family friends with the stipulation that Eleanor could
visit any time she wanted to. Her last visit was just three weeks before
she died in 1962. The owner (Armand Hammer) then tried to sell the house
but couldn’t find anyone interested in it at $50,000 which doesn’t seem that
much, even in 1963. He was persuaded to donate it to the U.S. and Canadian
governments for the park.
Sugar Loaf Rock at the end of Liberty Point, the
southernmost tip of Campobello Island. You can see how high the tide
comes up by the dark-colored seaweed stuck to the rocks.
We went out to Liberty Point to eat our picnic lunch at the
recommendation of one of the guides. The view was great but the wind was
so strong our lunch would have blown away. We ended up further north on
the coast where there was a bit more protection and it was a little
warmer. The difference in temperature between being on the open ocean
side and the western bay side is huge.
We spent so much time at the cottage we had to go back on
Tuesday to see the rest of the island. It’s only nine miles long so there
wasn’t that much else to see, but we did get out to the north end to see the
Head Harbour Light Station from land. We had already seen it from the
water on our whale watching trip but it’s a beautiful place and well worth
seeing again.
Head Harbour Light Station at the northern end of
Campobello. The metal stairway at the right is one of several on the foot
trail out to the light house, the only way to get there other than by
boat. There’s a sign at the beginning of the trail with a very strong
warning about the tide rising at the rate of 5 feet per hour and not to try
wading or swimming across the channel because of strong currents and cold
water. In other words, if you don’t want to wait 8 hours to get back,
don’t lose track of the time.
One final gorgeous sunset from Lubec Tuesday night. We
woke up to very heavy fog Wednesday morning which reminded us how lucky we had
been with the weather. Lubec was socked in with fog for days right before
we got there and it returned as we left. Timing is everything.
Machias Bay at low tide.
Machias Bay at high tide.
Two shots of Machias Bay comparing low and high tide.
As we drove south away from Lubec we got to see Machias Bay at high tide.
If we hadn’t seen it low on Saturday we would have had no idea there was an
outlet for the Machias River under the causeway. Such different views.
The first 100 miles of our drive to Saco yesterday was
another rough one, again shaking the cats’ innards out. We hope this was
the last day on such bumpy roads as the rest of our route home will be mainly
on interstates……not that they can’t be rough (we remember I-40 in Oklahoma and
Arkansas all too well) but we’ve got a better chance on them than the back
roads up north which are hit so hard by frost heaves in winter.
On Saturday I’ll cover our three days here in Saco.
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