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Published: September 18th 2009
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Whew......alot happened since we last blogged, so hopefully you'll hang in there with us to the end!
Monday we drove from Vermont through New Hampshire into Maine, where we had a big surprise waiting for us......more about that later. It was a beautiful drive through mostly wooded areas. We took a small detour to see this covered bridge, and then had to stop to check out the old one-room school house. Tom even saw a bear crossing the road in front of us! (I didn't catch it, probably because I was busy looking at the map). Saw several large stands of birch trees, and learned that the paper birch is the state tree of NH.
Back to the surprise: Tom and LaVonne are friends that live in Spokane, WA, former Pizza Hut owners that Tom worked with. They, too, are on a cross-country trip, and when Tom called them Saturday night, found out that we had missed each other at Ben & Jerry's by only 45 minutes! They wanted to know where we'd be Sunday night, and we arranged to meet in Bangor that night for dinner. Imagine our surprise when we walked into the Marriott Courtyard late Sunday
afternoon to our very own welcoming committee! Needless to say, it was great to see them and hear all about their trip so far. They chose a wonderful restaurant for dinner, and even treated us. Who knows, perhaps our paths will cross again during this trip....stranger things have happened.
Early Monday morning we set out for Acadia National Park; it's about a 1 1/2 hour drive from Bangor. Our first stop was the Visitor Center, where we purchased an audio driving guide for the 20-something mile park loop. It was well worth it, giving us background and historical information about what we were seeing. The park is stunning!! Wide variety of forested areas as well as the dramatic rocky coastline, views of islands, lakes, and even a sandy beach. Hard for these Pacific Coast residents to believe we were actually looking at the Atlantic Ocean! It was also kind of cool knowing that we live at the most southwestern part of the U.S., and here we were, at close to the most northeastern point.
Well, in every journey there are usually some bumps in the road. When we'd start the car, it began to take several tries to
get it to start, which we knew wasn't right. So we headed back to Bangor before we were really ready in order to try and get this problem solved. Luckily, Tom got the ignition switch replaced that afternoon. Another bump in the road involved the computer. Our last night in Bangor, Tom was unable to access the internet, and that happened again when we got here to Portland. He was able to find a company that remotely cleaned up the computer, and gave him the tools to do it regularly himself. This is the reason that we didn't blog from Bangor. Needless to say, these problems weren't inexpensive to solve, but we just feel fortunate that we don't have to eat peanut butter sandwiches the rest of the trip, unless we want to, of course.
So, back to Acadia. We hadn't had our fill yet, so Tuesday morning we went back and had a 1 hour shared carriage ride on some of the 45 carriage roads inside the park. It was a wonderfully peaceful and quiet way to experience the park's beauty.
After that, we headed down the coastal route to Portland, ME. We stopped at a lobster
pound for lunch, which was delicious and fun. We enjoyed driving through all the small towns, many of which had been incorporated for well over 200 years. Driving across a bridge into Wicasset, we spied Red's Eats, a lobster shack that we had read about in several books. We split a lobster roll that contained over a pound of lobster meat! Wonderful doesn't even begin to describe it. In retrospect, it was a good thing, since we were tied to our hotel room last night during the computer-fixing process.
We didn't have any plans for today, and, as so often happens, our day ended up being close to perfect. It started out with a great breakfast at yet another restaurant we'd read about. Thanks to our suggestion of our waitress, we then took a 3 hour mail boat ride on the Casco Bay Ferry, stopping at several islands, and viewing a few more. It was a gorgeous day, sunny yet not hot, perfect for a boat ride. And because it's a municipal ferry service, it was much cheaper than a bay cruise of comparable length would be.
I was able to schedule a massage for this afternoon (traveling
is hard on this poor ole arthritic body), which made the day even better. Then it was back to the wharf for more seafood, this time fried clams for Tom and wonderful clam chowder for me. As soon as I finish typing this, I get to eat my dessert of whoopie pie cake, again something we've read about.
Love Tom & Nancy
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