Details
Features
About this place
Roque Bluffs State Park provides a great diversity of coastal landscapes: a beautiful, half-mile crescent of sand and pebbles along Englishman Bay is backed by the shallow waters of 60-acre Simpson Pond - allowing for bracing saltwater swims and much warmer fresh water soaks. The trails are open year round!
There are several short trails within the park that loop upon each other, so there are several different routes you could take. We chose the Houghton's Hill trail (which is a total of ~1 mile) and looped up with Pond Cove trail (also ~1 mile) by taking Millhill trail. The entire loop ended up being just over 2 miles. The trail is fairly flat and winds through several birch groves and pine forest. The Pond Cove trail follows the cove for a fair amount and offers gorgeous views of the ocean. There is a small lookout that has a picnic table - once we saw that we really wished we had brought a picnic!
Aside from the trails, the beach at Roque Bluffs is pristine and beautiful. We were there in October, so there were no other people and we got to just enjoy the crashing waves and warm sun. We also saw a bald eagle flying over the beach - there are several of them in the area.
We stumbled upon Roque Bluffs while drive south on route 1 and saw a sign for it just outside Machias. If you are anywhere near the area it is definitely worth a stop!
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