Hurricane Irene, August 29

We woke up to rain and fog on Sunday morning and scurried down the dirt road out to Highway 1. The hurricane had been down graded to a tropical storm, but you never know.. We had decided that Machias, about 40 miles away and a little more inland would be a good place to wait out the storm and it was near a main road. The trick was to find some place that wouldn't flood, and would be away from  flying debris.  The forecast still indicated that we would not be in the "extreme" path of Hurricane Irene, but we would still feel the effects of it.

We found a nice level paved parking area in Machias and the owner said we could park and wait out the storm, but there could be a possibility of flooding due to the high tide, and he would be checking his property through out the day. Maybe we should search for higher ground??? We checked out some higher ground, but decided we would be fine where we were.

The rain came and the wind blew all night, but it wasn't that bad.... a little rock'n roll'n during the night with a few strong gusts occasionally, but that was about it.

This morning we woke up to sunny, brilliant, but windy skies, thankful that I wasn't in Vermont or somewhere else where roads are badly flooded.

Before leaving Machias, we checked out the Machias River and Little Bad River Falls. 

Machias River, Machias

These are the Little Bad Falls, which is what Machias translates to.

 We thanked the owner of the parking lot we stayed in (he was out and about early checking on his property) and headed down the road to Ellsworth near Acadia National Park.  The drive down to Ellsworth was uneventful, without any signs of damage... just normal driving on a two lane bump road.