Judith Bush

Maine’s Ice Age Trail, Down East

The Maine landscape is made up of many interesting features created by vast sheets of glacial ice that covered Canada and the northern United States during the Ice Age. The Ice Age Trail will take you through one of the finest and most accessible areas of glacial moraines, deltas and eskers. It is located along the coastal “Down East” section of Maine and follows the retreating margin of the last great North American continental glacier, called the Laurentide Ice Sheet. The trail consists of stops along highways and country roads. It will take you from the top of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park, across the spectacular and remote sand barrens that are home to some of the nation’s largest wild blueberry crops, and on to the easternmost tip of the United States.

Following the Ice Age Trail

You can visit many interesting sites along the Ice Age Trail in an afternoon, or explore larger sections of the trail in day or two. As you travel the Trail, please note that much of it crosses rural areas. There are few stores, gas stations or motels, except in the larger towns, as indicated on the map. Plan your needs accordingly. The season may affect your experience; for instance, many of the blueberry barrens are quite busy during harvest time, and some coastal sites are best viewed at low tide, but the Trail can be explored year-round.

http://iceagetrail.umaine.edu/content/intro.php

Inspired by a clipping: The Nature Conservancy has “Bear Mountain Lodge” there, which looks interesting. (www.bearmountainlodge.com). I think there’s a Friends Meeting there, too, which J&M N from Palo Alto Meeting attend at times.

We had a great — but very windy — visit to Mt Diablo in late December of 2006. I made a Yahoo Trip Planner before we went, collecting information about the area. We weren’t up to braving the wind for much hiking, but we did enjoy ourselves.

At the peak, the wind and views were both breathtaking. Actually, the wind was more breathtaking, but we could still see one of the Farallons and the snow capped Sierra range. We indulged in a little geographic geekery, making note of the baseline and meridian used for surveying much of Norther California and Nevada.

From http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/queryFx?MTD the average wind speed when we were at the peak was 40 mph, with gusts to 59 mph.

Rock City was fascinating and beautiful — and warm and on the lee side of the wind. There is a ribbon of Eocene sandstone, the bedding layers tilted almost straight up, that wraps around the side of the mountain. The rocks are worn with odd caves and knobs, and concrete smooth surfaces (with a regrettable amount of modern petroglyphs). [There wasn’t a book for sale on the Diablo geology, but this site is great. I wish i’d seen the roadside geology guide before we went, but with the trip fresh in my mind, i have explained for me that the bright red soils i saw were “red radiolarian cherts.”]