I almost don’t want to write about visiting Eastport because I’m worried everyone will stampede there for a visit. But I can’t in good conscience, as a Mainer, do that. Because, my God, Down East is beautiful. And I know beautiful scenery; I live in the Midcoast. If you go Down East, you must take Route 1 by the ocean. Inland is faster but not as pretty (it’s still Maine, though, so even if you take the faster way, it will be glorious).

As the hours pass, the deciduous trees give way to evergreens and rocky scrub; blueberry bushes crawling over every available surface to them, and the whole time, you’ll be looking out to sea. In the Midcoast, only the well-off can afford oceanfront property. Down East, a working-class person can still afford a home that looks out at the Atlantic.

Wiscasset claims to be the prettiest village in Maine, but it certainly has a contender for the title in Eastport (which is, of course, a city and not a village). The downtown streets have all the cute little brick buildings you’d expect, a working waterfront, and the tiniest little U.S. Customs and Border Patrol office, because it is a port of entry, technically, and you can probably swim to Canada from there, although I wouldn’t recommend it.

My fiancée Bo and I took the dogs up for a few days, which was a learning experience. Turns out Janey is a nervous urinator and Karma, for reasons only known to herself, ate two of Bo’s headbands. The island is incredibly dog-friendly and full of deer that are afraid of neither man nor beast, including beasts named Karma who have never seen a deer before and are lunging for it in glee. (Karma probably had the best time out of all four of us.)

The highlight of the trip, for me, was the whale watch. It was my first-ever sober whale watch, and it’s much easier to see the whales if you don’t have wine vision. We went out into the Bay of Fundy, into international waters (which felt quite naughty). I couldn’t tell you if the minke, finbacks, humpbacks or porpoises we saw were Canadian or American, but I can say they were so majestic I cried.

Not as much as I cried at Shackford Head State Park, when we walked right into a fire ant infestation (everyone was fine), but I definitely welled up seeing those magnificent queens of the sea. They’re beautiful, but also kind of terrifying; they can sneak incredibly close to the water’s surface without being seen. If a whale was feeling cranky, it could have taken our little boat right out if it felt like it. Quite considerate of them to blow a giant water spout in the air before surfacing so you know to whip the binoculars out.

Bo saw two full humpback whale breeches when they throw themselves out of the water entirely. I saw zero breeches because (headband destruction notwithstanding) all animals like Bo better.

If you’re someone who enjoys walking quiet streets, looking at old houses, and commenting on architecture and design choices (which I absolutely am), Eastport is the perfect town. There is such a sense of history there. It’s not the kind of history that you see on commemorative plaques and statues, although there are plenty of those scattered around town, which will be of particular interest to buffs of the War of 1812. It’s the quiet kind of history, where you hear whispers of echoes and pass by old houses that have nurtured generations of Mainers, the kind where you’re living in the same tidal rhythms as your ancestors would have lived one, two, three hundred years ago.

It feels like the end of the world, Bo said, but not in the way of Armageddon – in the way of the map’s edge, in the way that the rest of the world and its problems cannot find you in the little city on the edge of the sea. Eastport is not for the tourist who needs to be constantly entertained, but for the weary traveler in need of rest, relaxation and no open businesses after 7 p.m., it’s utterly perfect.

Victoria Hugo-Vidal is a Maine millennial. She can be contacted at:
themainemillennial@gmail.com
Twitter: @mainemillennial