Category Archives: Maine

A happy ending

I was asleep by the time Bob posted last night, so I didn’t get to make any editorial comments. That being said, I need to officially object to the term “little bit” as used to describe the extra amount we ended up walking yesterday. Checking our route on google maps, I see that we walked an extra 4.2 miles, not counting some of the extra back and forth to the beach, the restaurant, etc.

And we did it without a lot of breaks, either. There was a restaurant immediately after Fort McClary State Park, about 3.5 miles into our journey, but we weren’t really hungry yet and we’d just taken a little break at the park, so we passed it by. (We considered getting lunch to go at the general store next door, which advertised the “world’s best sandwiches” — but then we saw the “Trump 4 President” sign in the window and Just Couldn’t Do It.)

Restaurants — or anything else of interest, really — proved to be pretty thin on the ground after that. The first part of our walk, through Portsmouth and downtown Kittery, was really lovely, with an active waterfront full of quaint businesses. (We definitely fail to properly appreciate them since they’re so close to home.) Kittery Point was lovely, too, with its perfectly maintained New England houses, gorgeous gardens in the front and glimpses of lobster boats and floating buoys in the background. But once we got past the fort, it was just road and vegetation and the occasional house.

As a result, we didn’t end up stopping to eat until about 3:00 in the afternoon, when we fortified ourselves with beer, crab cakes, and sweet potato fries at the Lobster Cove. Luckily, this set us up well for our dinner, since the earliest reservation available at Mimmo’s was 8pm. (It was crucial that we get into Mimmo’s, not because of its great reputation but because everything else would have meant a longer walk.)

Long Sands Beach

And so, despite the fact that the day didn’t turn out quite as planned, it all ended happily. Our huge and delicious Italian dinner (followed by a brownie sundae at a nearby ice cream stand) was just what we needed. Afterwards we watched a group of people releasing some kind of candle-powered floating lanterns out over the ocean, with a huge almost-full moon in the background.

Total mileage for the day (not including side trips): 14 miles.

Leg One, Plus a Little Bit

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Ready to go in Market Square, about 9:35 am. Thanks to Charles for the ride into town, and for snapping this photo.

Who says you have to go far from home to have an adventure? Not us. Especially after Jen looked at air fare and decided that we weren’t going to jet anywhere for the girls’ camp weeks. Instead, we’re self-propelled.

And we’re walking mostly on routes we’ve driven before — in some cases, very often. One of our working theories is that we’ll see more if we take the time to walk fro m place to place. We may not see as many places as we would if we were zipping around in the Fit, but we’ll see more of the world around us.

Would we notice the views of the harbor if we drove east along Whipple Road into Kittery Point? Probably. But we wouldn’t have noticed the Gundalow saling out with the tide. Walking, we found a tiny secret beach, got a good view of a submarine at the shipyard, and poked into a funky garden stand near the Kittery/York line (too bad you can’t drink leeks).

Our route brought us past the Portsmouth Post Office, where Jen mailed letters to our campers.

Also, on a Saturday morning in August, we may have made better time walking through southern Maine than many of the people driving up routes 95 and 1.

Even keeping a steady pace, we ended up needing to propel ourselves a little bit farther than planned because the York Harbor Inn was full (and seems to own all the other inns in its immediate vicinity, and these inns, they told us, were also full). We walked an extra two miles to Long Sands, saw some hotels with vacancies, inexplicably walked past them, then backtracked to finally secure our lodgings at about 5:30.

It was an adventurous day.

Kittery started here and ended a long time later.

The highlight might have been walking across the Memorial Bridge from Portsmouth into Kittery. After that it seemed like a long time that we were walking in Kittery. Oh, the joy when we saw a sign that talked about York’s policies towards littering. We knew we were close to our goal for the day — and also that we were never going to litter in York.

Sometimes the shoulder got a little narrow.

We appreciated the flat, smooth hiking terrain and generally light traffic. Mostly there was a wide shoulder or at least a flat grassy section to walk on away from the road. Sometimes there were six inches of pavement between the white line and a cliff. Sometime there was a whole sidewalk for us. The weather was nice: sunny and breezy for most of the day; a bit of clouds while we were stopping for a break at Fort McClary State Park made us wonder what we were going to do if the skies opened up. The two options we settled on were to wear our raincoats or use them to cover our backpacks, which contain everything else we need for the rest of the trip. Jen hit her Fitbit goal of 10,000 steps sometime before the noon hour. We walked on past the Frisbee Market and Cajun Lobster restaurant in Kittery. Perhaps we should have stopped in for a bite. There’ s really not much else past there for a while.

The Gundalow and Constitution Light as seen from Fort McLary.

After a long, lonely stretch on Rt. 103, we hit civilization again in York, with the Wiggly Bridge Park (where we had granola bars) and a cool path along the water called the Fisherman’s Walk. This path led us right to the York Harbor Inn where the clerk said his inn was full and don’t bother asking about any of the other ones on either side of it. He directed us instead toward York Beach, which is surely what he does to all people who look like they’ve just walked in from Portsmouth.

Barely starting to get tired at Wiggle Bridge Park.

We made it to the beach and wandered for a time, hopeful that some nice place would take us in. None did, but the place we’re in is good enough — maybe not good enough for $260 a night, but good enough. We are right across the street from the beach and not too far up from Mimmo’s Restaurant, which I have wanted to try for a while and can now say is worth the visit.

After securing a room and a reservation at Mimmo’s, we went down to the beach and hopped into the ocean. Sorry, I did that. Jen sat down in the shallows and chilled her legs down in the cold Maine waters. She was not interested in chilling the rest of her body.

Mimmo's deson't sell alcohol (or charge for opening a wine bottle you bring in), but they'll give you a shot of amaretto of Mimmo likes you well enough.

Mimmo’s doesn’t sell alcohol (or charge for opening a wine bottle you bring in), but they’ll give you a shot of amaretto if Mimmo likes you well enough.

Then we went back, hopped on the Internet and reserved a room for tomorrow in Ogunquit. As shorter walk and a little more security, that’s what the next day should bring.

On the road again

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Well, we’ve been back at home for three months now, and in many ways it feels like we never left. After jumping back into our usual routine of school, work, and activities, our Central America trip seems like another world. So, time for a new (mini) adventure!

With the kids all away at camp for two weeks (!), Bob and I had three criteria for what we wanted to do: (1) not too expensive, and (2) fairly close to home in case we needed to do an emergency camp pickup, and (3) something that we couldn’t easily do with the kids along.

My mind immediately jumped to some kind of walking or biking trek. I’ve always wanted to do one of those European vacations where you walk from village to village, past castles and sheep and cheese shops, and arrive each night at a quaint little inn where your bags are waiting for you. Though I did briefly toy with this idea, it didn’t meet criterion #2 and a quick look at air prices made #1 right out as well. I started to look closer to home. Apart from one possibility in Vermont (which, despite the name “inn to inn tours” seemed to imply that a car was a necessity), I didn’t come up with anything.

So, then I started thinking, we can do this by ourselves, right? I mean, we could pack really light. Our bags wouldn’t be very heavy. (I have yet to confirm this with a test run. Based on past experience, I’m a bit apprehensive about this assumption.)

Will this get me through five days? Will it fit in my pack? Time will tell.

And in terms of destination — well, we have one of the most beautiful areas in the country right here. And a little googling revealed that there are indeed quaint little towns (possibly with cheese shops, though castles and sheep seem unlikely) strung out at convenient 10- to 15-mile intervals along the route.

So, we’ll be walking up the Maine coast, starting in beautiful downtown Portsmouth, NH. We’ll cross the bridge into Kittery, ME and continue on for five days or so, hopefully ending in Old Orchard Beach. When we arrive at our final destination, we’ll hop on the Downeaster Amtrak line and cruise right back to Durham.

The plan was to avoid car travel entirely by starting our journey with the COAST bus from Durham (a short walk from our house) to Portsmouth. Unfortunately, this morning I discovered a little note on the schedule that indicates, “No weekend routes in reduced service season.” Given that this bus is run by UNH, summer falls squarely into that category. So we may need to prevail upon a friend for a ride to the starting line.

Along the way we’ll see state parks, lighthouses, cliff walks, arcades, T-shirt shops, and lots and lots of coastline. First stop: York Harbor, approximately 11 miles (via a coastal route) from Portsmouth. We’re crossing our fingers on finding a convenient hotel, since it’s a high-season Saturday night and most places have a two-night minimum. Still, I figure someone will take pity on us if we show up on the doorstep. (If not, one of you locals might be getting a phone call.)

We fought the rain and the rain won

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The weather did not improve overnight.

However, we still counted ourselves somewhat lucky, since the torrential downpours that we’d heard pounding on the tent overnight had ceased and we were back to drizzle and tree-rain. Nadia greeted me in the morning with this: “Mom, there’s a huge puddle of water in the corner…” Turns out they SPILLED A WATER BOTTLE INSIDE THE TENT. As if we didn’t have enough water problems.

The chill persisted and a hot breakfast and tea were called for. Bob made a delicious hash and the smell was sufficiently good to pull reluctant girls from their warm sleeping bags.

The “summit” on Bar Island

Outdoor activities didn’t seem too promising, so we headed for a touch tank activity being held at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor. Unfortunately upon arriving we discovered that I’d incorrectly remembered the time and the Natural History Museum, where the touch tank was, was not yet open.

Theoretically, a beautiful view of Bar Harbor

So, despite half-hearted protests from Nadia and the fact that Lanie had left her raincoat in the tent (also, did I mention that both Zoe and Lanie left their sneakers outside the tent overnight?), we went into Bar Harbor and set off for Bar Island. At low tide, the island is connected to Bar Harbor by a sandbar, and you can walk across on the sand. The kids would have had a ball tide-pooling here if they weren’t so cold, but Lanie still managed to find a large number of shells to collect (which I believe are still sitting in my raincoat pocket). On Bar Island we took a little hike to the summit, and saw what I’m sure would have been a beautiful view across the harbor in less foggy conditions.

Back in Bar Harbor, the rain started in earnest. We had ducked into a tourist information center and were bleakly thumbing through a newspaper, looking for things to do in the rain, when I came across something exciting. The local microbrewery, which Bob and I had given longing glances as we passed, had an ad for beer AND SODA tastings. To me, that said – “Kids welcome!” So we walked through the pouring rain to the Atlantic Brewing Company, where Bob and I tried four kinds of beer and the kids tried homemade root beer and blueberry soda.

By this point the rain had become a deluge, and we realized we were unfortunately a fair way from the car. By the time we got back we were all drenched. The kids in their wet sandals were now all far better off than me in my sodden sneakers, which had felt so warm and dry that morning.

Rather than enjoying a scenic view, we ate our ragtag lunch in a parking lot, rain pounding on the car all the while. Luckily it was by now the correct time for the touch tank presentation, and we spent quite a while listening to the ranger and exploring the little museum. (As with the water bottle inside the tent, Lanie managed to compound our water issues by getting the sleeves of her sweatshirt entirely drenched in the touch tank.)

When the rain let up a bit, we set off down the park loop road and stopped at Sand Beach. The park had been regularly taunting us with pictures and postcards of this beach, drenched in sun, with happy bathing-suited people frolicking about in the water. The scene was rather different for us — in fact, we had the whole beautiful beach to ourselves. We didn’t stay too long.

At Sand Beach

Since it was not really raining at this point, we set off on a walking trail along the rocks of the coastline, toward Thunder Hole about a half mile away. It was a LONG half-mile, but the views were gorgeous and Thunder Hole was worth the trip — though it wasn’t actually thundering at that time, Zoe and Nadia loved climbing around on the rocks and splashing through the water. Lanie at this point (still having no raincoat) was too cold and tired to want to do anything but go back to the car.

Yes, as a matter of fact we DID manage
to get Junior Ranger badges!

Bob and I had spent a fair amount of time debating plans during the day. We kept consulting different weather forecasts and trying to decide whether to hang on or throw in the towel. Eventually we’d seen that the little Bar Harbor pizza restaurant/movie theater was showing Monsters’ University at 5:30, so we decided to tough it out and head there at dinnertime. By the time we got back, we could just go to bed and hope for better things the next morning.

Unfortunately, when we went back to change into drive clothes before the movie, we discovered that some kind of calamity had befallen our tarp/tent setup and the tent was now half-full of water. Well, you don’t have to hit us over the head with a hammer — this was the last straw and we were out of there. Nadia and Lanie were very disappointed — Lanie cried and cried — while Zoe seemed happy enough to go home to a warm house. (This is the exact opposite of what I would have predicted, by the way.)

At Thunder Hole

Nadia and Zoe were great, though — they really rallied to help us break camp in record time. Within an hour of when we’d discovered the wet tent, we were on the road, heading toward home. (The car was an utter disaster, with wet clothes and towels and tent parts everywhere, but that couldn’t be helped.) I couldn’t help but pity the poor saps who were lined up to enter the campground (this being the Friday night before the 4th of July). And the huge platters of Chinese food that were put before us at the Noodle House in Brewer, Maine did much to raise everyone’s spirits.

Lest you worry that the kids were too scarred by this experience, they spent the next night at home — sleeping in the tent in the back yard.

****

From Bob:

We left Acadia with a lot more to see. Truly. We spent a lot of time telling the kids things like: “Right out there, where all the fog is, there a beautiful ocean.” Many sentences started: “On a clear day, you would see…” Sometimes we said: “If it wasn’t so wet…”

As a testament to how wet we were, check out the picture of the girls at Sand Beach. They stayed on the stairs and didn’t even go onto the sand. Normally, it would have taken the National Guard to keep them from getting knee deep in the water by the time the shutter on the camera closed. The kids were troopers, but the elements really kept us in check.

I could tell Jen’s optimism was flagging as the day dripped on, as was mine. The kids, to their great credit, were against leaving. They wanted to stick it out. So, when the tent collapsed and provided the final straw, there was some release for the adults and much disappointment from the kids. Lanie cried the whole time we took the tent down.

It didn’t take long for everyone to make peace with our fate. It didn’t hurt that our fate included a stop at Noodles and Company. It might not look like much, but for $50 we got totally filled up with good Chinese food for dinner, and then we got filled up again for lunch the next day.

We’re definitely swinging through Brewer, ME, on our next trip to Acadia.

And, we’re definitely going back to Acadia to see all the stuff we didn’t see this time…and maybe pick up a few more popovers in the process.

“The Vacation State”? Ha!

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The view of the Atlantic, a short walk from our campsite

Alert readers of last year’s cross country trip blog may recall that we had almost freakishly good weather. Honestly, over the whole five weeks I’m not sure if we ever took our raincoats out of the car. Almost like someone had made a deal with the devil or something.

Well, apparently the time has come to pay the piper.

As we were driving northward on Wednesday evening, heading toward our campground in Acadia National Park, squinting through the torrential downpour and watching water from the semi-flooded highway fly up to window height in our heavily-laden van, Bob and I were quietly talking about plan B. What sort of hotels might there be in Bangor, ME? Soon, though, the downpour slowed to a drizzle and so we pressed onward.

At Blackwoods Campground, everything was dripping. Especially the large number of trees that hovered over our campsite. So while it wasn’t actually raining, every time a breeze blew splatters of water fell on our heads. Nevertheless, we managed to set up the tent, eventually get a fire going and even cook some chicken and rice, and later s’mores, over it. The girls and I walked down the shore path to see the ocean at night, roaring away far below the rocky coastline.

We were awakened multiple times by heavy rains beating on the tent, but by morning we were back to just the tree-drizzle, so we counted ourselves lucky. (At this point we were also counting ourselves foolish for not having packed more warm clothing. Will we never learn?) We warded off the chill with a fire, bacon and eggs, and hot tea, then started planning our day.

Acadia is rather large, like many national parks, but unlike most of them has only one visitor center, up near Bar Harbor by the entrance to Mount Desert Island. We didn’t really want to spend the morning retracing our steps in the car, but we did want to get some park information and a good weather forecast (as well as — of course — the Junior Ranger program books). We’d planned to do some bike-riding on Acadia’s famous network of carriage roads, and we saw that we could get to the visitor center on them, so we decided to kill two birds with one stone. The visitor center looked to be about 15 miles away, but we did not let that daunt us. “Your friends the Brookses do that kind of mileage before breakfast,” is what we told the children. Also, we packed a couple of Hershey bars.

Bob’s bike seat was soaked
from the car ride. This was
his elegant solution.

Hauling our bikes up the stairs to the
carriage road

It’s good that no one told us in advance how hilly this place is. Even before we got to the carriage roads, we had to do a couple of mostly uphill miles on the Park Loop Road, rapidly causing the girls to start stripping off raincoats and fleeces. When we got on to the carriage roads (which we had to access via a set of stairs — what kind of joke is that for roads that are largely meant for cyclists?), the hill continued.

I should say here that I had by far the best of this deal. Bob and I have decent road bikes but not mountain bikes, so I was riding on a bike borrowed from our friend Craig Haskell, which was miles better than our old rattletrap that Bob was riding. In addition, Bob had the “tagalong” (one of those third-wheel things that kind of makes a bike into a tandem) hooked on so Lanie could ride behind. The weight of this whole contraption was such that if Bob stopped on a hill, there was no getting started again.

Another wonderful thing about the carriage
roads was the excellent signage at every
intersection.

Lanie was the most cheerful of the lot. She sat there with a smile, occasionally pedaling, sometimes attempting to give Bob an aneurysm by making statements like, “I like pedaling backward better than pedaling forward — it’s much easier!” or “If I drag my foot against the wheel, the wheel tries to take my foot with it!” Sometimes she would stand up to pedal, her whole body listing to one side then the other, which I know from experience makes the bike teeter terrifyingly.

Luckily, the carriage roads were beautiful — car-free and uncrowded. In our ride we passed through gorgeous views of ocean and lakes and ponds and woodlands. We had a picnic (good old peanut butter again!) on the shores of Eagle Lake, and thanks to our excellent map didn’t get lost even once. (I should add here more praise for this map. I find that I enjoy a trip like this more if I know exactly where I am, and what the name of that body of water that I’m passing is, and how far it is until the next turning. Also, Acadia has such interesting and poetic names. Breakneck Pond. The Bubbles. Witch Hole. Aunt Betty’s Pond. I wish I had a history on where they came from.)

Our lunch spot on Eagle Lake.

Eventually, we did make it to the visitor center. And all those miles and miles of uphill travel were undone in an instant, as we made a sharp and steep descent to the parking lot. I didn’t ruin the children’s fun by reminding them that we would need to go back the same way.

Wishing to avoid a mutiny, Bob and I decided to alter our homeward journey a bit. While our new route would be a little longer, it had the immense benefit of passing by the Jordan Pond House, a beautiful place where you can sit on the lawn overlooking the pond and gorge yourself on their famous popovers. With visions of popover sundaes in their heads, the girls were able to keep on moving.

Unfortunately we didn’t have a topographical map, so we again didn’t realize that our new route would be even more uphill than the last. Really unrelentingly uphill. But apart from an incident where my chain came off and got stuck and I had to be rescued by a passing Good Samaritan with pliers (luckily, since Bob was way ahead of me up the path and there was no way he was going to ride that thing back down the hill again — I could have died back there and he wouldn’t have known) we had a pretty successful ride. And the popover sundaes were worth every minute of it. Seriously, their homemade ice cream was the best ice cream I’ve ever had. Maybe the best thing I’ve ever had, period. (Bob thinks that my opinion may have been skewed by low blood sugar but I’m sticking to it.)

Jordan Pond

After sitting outside in the cold mist for a while, and eating ice cream, we were all freezing. Fortunately, a few minutes on our bikes had solved that problem. The ride home was a bit tricky because the Park Loop Road is one-way, so we couldn’t retrace our steps entirely. We ended up going back on the regular roads, which were not nearly so pleasant and were STILL very hilly. Luckily it was only a few miles or we would have had a mutiny on our hands.

Despite the huge popover sundaes, we were all famished by the time we got dinner ready. Sausages cooked over the fire had never tasted so good.
***
From Bob:

Nadia started a game last summer that goes like this: whenever you see a license plate from a new and unusual place — let’s say Guam — you say in a funny Nadia voice “Guuuaaaam license plate” and try to tickle someone near you. There was a lot of tickling and funny Nadia voices around on this trip. Acadia packs ’em in from all over — Tennessee, Texas, Maryland, Florida, Colorado, Virginia, we saw them all. The van next to us in the campground was from California.

So you can feel proud, fellow New Englanders, that we have a gem here in Acadia, and it draws folks from all around. I’d say roughly 73 percent were there at least partly for the popovers. We saw the most diversified array of car tags in the parking lot of the Jordan Pond House.

And let me tell you, it was nice leaning the gray beater and tagalong against a tree* and walking past all the Massachusetts and Connecticut cars waiting to find a parking space. Bike riding has many advantages. Another one is that you can eat ice cream and chocolate sauce with impunity — especially if you’ve ridden a good portion of the park’s carriage road system. I figure we must’ve covered about half of the 45 miles they have.

Seeing the old US Park Service arrowhead and all the people in ranger hats brought me back to last summer. So did our camp plates and our fold-up cooking utensils. One nice surprise was that we did a good job putting things away last year. Just about everything we needed was waiting of us in the two Tupperware bins that hold our camping gear– even a tarp and bungee cords, which I forgot we had and bought a whole other set. A few things we do need to add are: a hatchet for turning camp wood into kindling, some dish soap, and a larger water vessel. Another box of matches would be good, too. The people in the van across the road gave us a box that was about 1/8th full because matches was another thing we forgot to put into the camp boxes.

* No one is likely to want to abscond with my bike, and even if someone tried, they would expire on the first hill unless they had my thunder thighs or a five year old who knew how to pedal. The bike lock we brought was saved for Craig’s bike.