Happy Trails

So the entire 85-mile length of the Down East Sunrise Trail is now open for use. The grand opening last week in Hancock drew cyclists, runners, and ATV users (see above) so they could speed away to check out the scenery. Other sections of the trail farther east in Washington County opened for public use last year.
Dale Henderson is still pursuing his lawsuits against the state (according to this BDN story), claiming they do not have legal access to the rail corridor, but he seems to be playing along, having removed the barricades he had set up where the corridor divides his land in Hancock and Steuben.
Many rail enthusiasts continue to object to the conversion of the old rail line into a trail, but state officials have defended the move saying that the old ties and rail would have to come up anyway (and then replaced) for rail service to resume on the track. Certainly, the corridor will get more use as a trail than it will anytime soon and a railway. The demand for passenger or freight rail service through Hancock and Washington counties just isn't there. Maybe it will be again one day, but state officials will have to cross that trestle when they come to it (sorry, couldn't resist).
Certainly, there is an economic opportunity here. As the BDN points out, some businesses along the corridor are clearing paths to the trail to attract customers off the trail, and some people are planning new businesses entirely, such as snowmobile lodges.
I, for one, have been eyeballing the corridor route in the Gazetteer, trying to figure out which sections will be the most scenic. I'm guessing that the Schoodic Bog, east of Franklin between routes 182 and 183, Cherryfield to Columbia Falls, and the Whitneyville-through-East Machias portions are the nicest, but if I have time to scout out the whole route I will try. It will be interesting to see how well those using self-propelled means (joggers, skiers, bikers) can co-exist with motorized trail users (snowsleds and ATVs). I plan to use my bike and skis in the coming months to find out.

Moonrise over Crowley Island, Addison, August 21, 2010.

Too Earl-y To Tell

For the past couple of days, government officials in North Carolina and Massachusetts - and to a lesser extent Maine - have been gearing up for the possible impact of Hurricane Earl.
As you can see from the map, the hurricane is expected to pass over Nova Scotia, with tropical storm winds in far eastern Maine, mainly Washington County.
Hurricanes rarely reach Maine intact. Those that do blow up the East Coast generally pass far out to sea or break down over land further southwest and are degraded to less powerful storms by the time their effects are felt Downeast.
Earl is expected to remain a hurricane as it passes Cape Cod, with winds between 74 and 95 miles an hour, but probably won't pose a truly catastrophic threat to Maine. Hurricane Bob in brought some havoc to the southern part of the state in 1991, where it blew over as a tropical storm, but nothing like what many southern states have seen and the hands of stronger hurricanes.
But it could get slightly exciting Downeast. Forecasters say there won't be much of a storm surge, and the leading edge of the storm is not expected to coincide with high tide as it reaches Maine's shores. But if there are sustained wind speeds of 40 mph or more, which would be consistent with a tropical storm, people surely will notice.
The lack of a significant storm surge would benefit people in Eastport, which at the far eastern edge of Maine is relatively close to the storm's projected path and is connected to Perry only by a winding causeway that runs between Cobscook and Passamaquoddy bays. A rise in water levels would have the potential to cut Eastport off from the mainland.
The lack of an alternate land route out of town was brought up a few years ago in conjunction with a proposal from Quoddy Bay LNG to build an LNG terminal on Passamaquoddy tribal land in Sipayik, directly next to Route 190. Any incident with the terminal could have shut down the road, which prompted the developer to suggest rebuilding a bridge just west of 190, between the local village of Quoddy and Old Eastport Road in Perry.
The Quoddy Bay proposal seems to be dead at this point, however, with the company having running out of investor funds and the energy industry now being focused on tapping into new types of oil and gas deposits in North America rather than importing it from overseas. A change in tribal leadership and questions about federal review of the project also don't help. But the Quoddy Bay proposal, and now Earl, have brought up a good point: should there be another road route out of Eastport? I am sure there are a lot of different, complicated answers to the question.