Entering the Eastern Trail.

Last night, snug in our top-floor aerie at our B&B in Kennebunkport, we listened to rain pattering on the roof and watched lightning flash out the windows.  This morning, we awoke to a gray drizzle.  But happily, by the time we finished our enormous breakfast and packed up our stuff, the sun was shining again.

Biddeford seems OK so far.

We debated a few different options for the day.  Heading all the way to Biddeford/Saco via the coastal route was a bit daunting at 15+ miles, especially since my knee had been giving me trouble since the previous day.  Going straight there was a more manageable 10 miles, but on not-very-appealing roads.  Finally, we settled on a third option — making another use of the handy shuttle bus to go back to Kennebunk, then walk to Biddeford on a route that was largely an off-road rails-to-trails bike path (the Eastern Path).  It was about the same distance, but seemed like it would be a much more pleasant walk.  (Google identified this path for us, so I was confident that it was in fact a real path unlike yesterday’s situation.)

Unimpressed with downtown Biddeford.

All went well and we made good time, despite frequent stops for me to ice my knee with a bag of ice that I’d brought from the inn.  We rolled into Biddeford around 3pm, without a firm plan for the evening.

Our usual M.O. in these situations is to find a place to have a drink and/or snack and use the free wifi to figure out our next move.  This proved to be more of a challenge than expected.  No offense to any Biddeford readers out there, but Biddeford is kind of a hellhole.  We wandered, dispirited, through downtown, unable to find a cafe or non-sketchy-looking bar in the whole place.  The skies were darkening ominously.  We came upon a brewery with a tasting room but it was closed.  So we developed a single-minded mission: Get the Hell Out of Biddeford (GTHOOB).  With that in mind, we headed toward the train station, located across the river in Saco.

We had a wish to get out of Biddeford. And then, Sh-Zoom! Our transit wishes came true!

Fortunately, Saco proved a substantial step up, greeting us immediately with the Run of the Mill brewpub, which provided us with excellent beer, snacks, and free wifi.  We used the latter to determine that we could GTHOOB by catching a shuttle right down the road at the train station and take a shortcut to our final destination, Old Orchard Beach.  (We also learned that in fact we could have taken the shuttle from right where the Eastern Trail ended, thus allowing ourselves to GTHOOB a few miles sooner and avoid all the strip malls and disreputable businesses.)

Triumphant arrival in OOB.

Old Orchard Beach provided its own challenge, that of finding a hotel room.  We put on a lot of steps wandering back and forth.  The train goes through right along the beach, which is convenient for those of us relying on public transportation — but inconvenient for those who just want to walk to the beach and are blocked by train tracks that require large detours to get over.  The skies were also still threatening, although we’d miraculously avoided getting rained on thus far.

Threatening skies

In the end, rather than pay a fortune for a sketchy-looking hotel, we decided to hop on the 7:30pm train home.  This gave us time for a walk on the beach and a margarita, which was about all we needed from Old Orchard Beach.  And the two-mile walk home from the Durham train station felt like nothing at all.  (As walking connoisseurs, we saw it through new eyes, and looked approvingly upon its wide, comfortable sidewalks, finely manicured lawns, and attractive buildings.)

Total miles walked today: approx. 14

We are not out to convince people that this is a vacation for everyone, but in light of some feedback we’ve received since announcing our intentions, we need to point out a few reasons why walking the southern Maine coast would be a good idea for some people.  Here are some of the joys of our trip so far; you can decide how much they appeal to you:

Take that, motor driven vehicles!

We can go where we want.   I know automobiles are seen as a great liberator but it shouldn’t take too much of an imagination to see that they come with their restrictions.  This is particularly true in coastal New England, where the towns were well established before the first Model A came to town.  There is only so much they can widen the roads in Ogunquit.  There is only so much parking space they can build at Short Sands.  When we hobble into town now, it is a very comforting feeling to know that we don’t have to wait in traffic (motorized progress always stalls coming into these towns in the summer), hunt for a parking space (they are always scarce and often require parallel parking skills that for me are itinerant at best), worry about citations, and decide what can or can’t be left in the car.  We don’t have to look for appropriate spots to make u-turns (though, unfortunately, we’ve had to turn around an retrace our steps a few times so far).  I’m not fumbling with my key (or worrying about losing them) every time I look for something in my pocket. We’re not searching for gas stations or trying to decipher directions on the fly.  Correction, we’re often deciphering directions on the fly, but we’re not in danger of running anyone over while we’re doing it.

The beach was our highway yesterday.

We can walk on the beach as far as we want.  Anyone who says she likes to walk on the beach should have been with us today.  Of our first seven miles or so, between five and six were on firm-packed sand.  Our feet were in the water for much of it.  We went on without care.  We didn’t have to go back and get our car.

Though the rising tide did make it difficult to follow the beach in some places.

There was no meter to feed. When the opportunity arose to change our route a bit by taking the trolley inland to Kennebunk (yes, it’s true, we did not walk the whole distance from Ogunquit to Kennebunkport) we were able to jump on it and not worry about having to come back and get our car.  We were un-tethered.

There are fewer distractions.  With car travel, there are more options, which seems like it would make people happy.  Today we did not have to worry about what we would crank through the radio, whether we would use A/C or open windows, who would drive and who would navigate.  Did we want to try for street parking or should we go to the $25 lot?  Maybe we could find a $10 lot and walk a little?  Should I drop you off with the stuff or find a place to park first?

Sure, we had a lot of other decisions to make, but they were interesting, thought-provoking decisions — Coastal route or straight path?  Stop for lunch or press on? Do you think they’d mind if we walked down their driveway?  Can this possibly be North? How far do we think can we go in one day before our bodies give out?  These are all distracting questions, I guess; or maybe you’d call them engaging, because for some of them it really makes a difference which way we decide.

Ready to leave our inn in Ogunquit, with everything I need on my back.

There are fewer things to carry.  I know this also seems like an illogical defense of walking.  You can carry many more things in a car.  That’s why we have cars.  Having to carry everything on our backs makes it easy to decide what to bring.  We may not have everything we want at the beach, like a folding chair and big blanket, but we have everything we need.  We have found all we really need is a towel to sit on, some sunscreen, a water bottle or two, something to read, maybe a change of clothes eventually.  These things and more are all waiting for us in our backpacks, just like they will be in our B&B room tonight and the place we eat lunch tomorrow.

Also, we’re not tempted to buy stuff.  We usually aren’t great consumers, but now it’s not even a considerations because we don’t want to carry anything more.

There are more things to notice.  Billboards on highways are really big so you can’t miss them as you speed by.  Walking people can notice much smaller things; they notice even more than people moving at bike speed.  Back in Kittery a cyclist managed to blurt out, “Great blue back there,” as he rolled by in his speedy bike outfit.  A few dozen feet up the road, we saw the heron that had caught the cyclist’s attention, and then we saw the heron gracefully pulse its wings, raise itself out of the marsh and fly away.  Jen noted how amazing it was that herons can fly so well while moving their wings so slowly.  The biker didn’t get to see that.

This time of year, the best thing we get to notice is berries.  If anyone out there decides to recreate this journey or attempt a similar trek through the same landscape — and no one may ever do this; there are many reasons why someone would not want to attempt this walk, which we’ll surely get to in a future post if not before — we might share the secret location of a blueberry patch off Shore Road in Cape Neddick or try to explain the difference between huckleberries and the ones that look like huckleberries but are probably poisonous.  Future trekkers might want to know this before taking on the Kennebunk Bridle Path, which features each these, plus several other kind of berries.

These places seem more exotic because it’s taken a while to get here.  Kittery, York and Ogunquit are not unfamiliar territory for us.  I visited my family on vacation just north of Short Sands immediately after having my first date with Jen.  (She was kind of a detour on my way north.)  We walked right past the church we got married in the and reception hall driveway.  This time around, though, everything feels more exotic and new.

Trailblazing

We get to blaze a trail.  This is not something people get to do that much anymore.   This adventure certainly isn’t on the scale of what earlier pioneers and explorers used to endure, but we’re still not entirely sure if it can be done, or if it can be done in a way that is somewhat pleasurable, interesting, and generally fulfilling without landing us in the hospital or prison. (Though we have considered prison as an inexpensive way to spend the night and extradition to New Hampshire as an easier way to get home than walking.)  We think it can be done, and we start out each morning with that intention, but we’re not at all sure it’ll all work out.

Staying and swimming some more at Wells was an option.

For instance, today we set out not know if we could make it all the way to Kennebunkport, which would be our goal, or if we would have to stop in Wells.  Wells would be a much shorter walk and would allow us to heal a little after two days of longer treks than we envisioned (particularly the first day when we stumbled around for a while before finding a place to stay).  Stopping in Wells would basically wreck our plans of hiking all the way to Old Orchard Beach. It would leave too many long walks across areas where resting opportunities would be scarce.  Even if we made it to Kennebunkport, tomorrow’s walk to Biddeford would be stretching our endurance.  We now know what 14+ miles can do to us.

Then, we stumbled on an opportunity when we arrived at Wells Beach, after pleasant morning of walking almost entirely on beaches:  There is a system of trolleys that connect York to Kennebunkport.  The trolleys pick up people at various hotels and parking lots on Route 1 and ferries them and their folding chairs to the string of beaches nearby.  This cuts down on the traffic; it gives people a chance to stay in one place and experience multiple recreation centers; and, perhaps more importantly, it only costs $1 for a one-way trip.

On board the Shoreline Explorer

Sure, we told people we were going to walk to OOB, but really our goal was to get there without a car.  Shaving off a few miles — particularly miles on four-lane, commercial Route 1 — would not really taint the intention of our trip, particularly if it allowed us to get to Kennebunkport and keep us on track for our goal.  Also, the trolley line is called “Shoreline Explorer,” which is kind of how we view ourselves, as explorers; so it seemed like a good fit.

By cross-referencing her downloadable map of Maine with the Seacoast Explorers’ route map, we saw that we had a few options.  We could have taken the blue line going north from Wells to the Maine Diner on Route 1, turned off onto Route 9, which eventually intersects with a hiking trail in the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge that looked to lead right into Kennebunkport.  Or, we could have taken the blue line right into downtown Kennebunk and walked about half a mile to something on the map labeled Bridle Path, which also stretched on the computer map right to our destination.

Coffee in Kennebunk

We chose option two, which promised to cut about two miles off our original walking-only path to Kennebunkport, and also remove the specter of another afternoon navigating a winding Maine back road.  We were immediately happy with the results.  Motorized transportation, after all, is pretty easy on the feet.  There. was a nice little cafe in Kennebunk where we got a coffee drink to share, used the wifi to book a room, and changed out of clothes still damp from a plunge in the Atlantic just before we left our beach walking for the day. (Jen also took the opportunity to throw away a pair of bathing suit bottoms that nearly malfunctioned spectacularly in the waves, thanks to a waistband that had relaxed with age.)

Resting along the Bridle Path.

We enjoyed a brief walk through town and found the Bridle Path without much problem.  The entry to the path was near a school parking lot, and there were multiple signs dedicated to explaining the trail and keeping cars and motorcycles out.  The trail actually extends from the Kennebunk railway station to downtown Kennebunkport.  It used to be a spur railroad line allowing tourists to travel the four miles from Kennebunk to the port without much time and effort.  It was a fantastic place to walk — not crowded, not buggy, no cars to contend with.  The path is shaded and peppered with historical markers and berry bushes.  It offers great views of the Mousam River.  After crossing Route 9, it turns into the wildlife refuge trail we considered aiming for.  Spaces in trees allowed for ocean and marsh views.  The blueberries in particular were plentiful.

Then we crossed another road and the trail disappeared.

No warning, no sign.  Just a golf course where the trail should have been.  Jen’s downloadable map did show the grey and white line skirting along the edge of a golf course, then going right through the middle.  It didn’t seem entirely right; but, then again, there were no signs on the golf course that said we couldn’t walk through.  The golf-cart path did seem to go right along the edge of the course and follow the path that the railway might have taken.  Taking any other route at this point, according to the map, would mean walking on winding Maine backroads.

Jen summons stealth to slink away from the golf course. Note the open gate across the street.

So we crashed the golf party — and there were plenty of golfers to witness it as they knocked around their shots in the late afternoon sunshine.  No one seemed to notice us.  Not even when the path we were taking appeared to be wiped out by a raised tee box.  Skirting that, we found a green in the way, then a row of hedges.  We walked around in cirlces, first trying re-capture the path, and then just trying to get off the darned golf course.  There were houses all around it and hedges and fences.  There’s probably a series of security videos showing us stumbling blindly around the course.  At some point they’ll speed it up a little, set it to the Benny Hill music, and play it at the country club Christmas party for laughs.

Finally, following the cart path all the way around a green off into a direction that  would have brought us clear into a major golfing thoroughfare, we recognized what appeard to be the foundation of an old bridge, possibly a railway bridge.  It crossed a small culvert and ended right in someone’s driveway.  We slinked across the bridge and down the driveway away from the golfers.

And we found what looked like the Bridle Path, across the street from the driveway, behind a gate that was almost closed but not completely.  Again, no signs encouraging or discouraging progress.  Beyond the gate, the trail was mowed and appeared to continue through a copse on the edge of the salt marsh.

Strange? Yes.  Inviting? Not entirely.  But eventually irresistible.  This path promised to drop us off right in the center of Kennebunkport.  No cars or narrow shoulders or anything.  We triple and quadruple-checked the map.  It sure looked right.  Even the salt marsh was there, and a bridge that would carry the trains over the salt marsh.  Just a small span across a narrow place in the marsh.  Surely the bridge would still be there.

We made it through the copse.  We bungled across an open area that appeared to be part of several houses’ back yards.  Not a single sign.  No one theere to ask us what the heck we were doing.

Wading in

We made it to the woods on the other end of the clearing.  The trail was still there, clearly visible through the woods.  Past a few more houses.  The woods started to thin out.  The trail started to narrow.  Then it was strangled in a wall of bushes.  Wait, a path crept off to the right.  Around a bend we saw the bridge — or the granite-blocked foundation of the bridge, still solid and vertical.   And, at its closest point, four feet from shore and in two feet of running water. This remind me of a conversation I was having with my friend the other day, she told me about the time she went to San Antonio with her family on a big walk and she got hit by a car! She thankfully found a really good San Antonio injury lawyer to deal with her case. She tells me they were fantastic at dealing with her situation and wrapped it up with the settlement she deserved for her distress, but I digress.

Jen was un-deterred.  She took off her sandals, handed me her backpack and waded in.  The made it to the bridge support.  She climbed the bridge support (in a travel skirt and bare feet!).

More trail blazing?

Then the dream ended.

The other bridge support was eight feet away from the first and through the gap flowed much deeper water.   We would have swum.  Travel skirts and Amphibian shorts are quick drying.  But backpacks, laptops and kindles aren’t.

Still, it was tough to turn around. We could see the roadbed for the path on the other side of the water.  Plus, when you’re walking 12 miles a day — after this misadventure, 14 miles today —  you don’t want to turn around and retrace any steps.  We also didn’t want to walk through anyone’s yard, but arrest for trespassing, in this instance, was seen as preferable to a half-mile of backtracking.

If any of the residents of Governors Way, Kennebunk, ME, called the cops, we had stumbled out of the vicinity by the time the flashing lights showed up.

So there’s another reason to walk.  A little bit of adventure.  Something to tell the grandkids.  And something to pass along to future trekkers: You can follow the Bridle Trail through the golf course, but don’t take it any farther, unless you bring along a few sturdy planks.

Actually, Kennebunk should fix that bridge and mark the trail.  It’s a great way to get around, and it could only help lessen traffic down in Kennebunkport.  Like most of the other centers we’ve been to on this trip, it was very pretty, but choked with traffic.

We managed to get there, get cleaned up in our B&B, and hit the town for drinks, the a beer sampler and dinner at the famous Federal Jack’s.

Tomorrow, more decisions and, possibly, more adventures.

Stay tuned.

Here’s the thing about the Sea Latch Inn.  There were a couple of places in the vicinity with Vacancy signs, but we chose to go in there because they advertised “Free Hot Breakfast”.  Little did we know that this would be provided at the Lobster Cove, the very restaurant we’d gone to for lunch the day before, three quarters of a mile south of the hotel.  I’m not sure if you all can appreciate the degree to which Bob and I did not want to start walking south in the morning.  But breakfast awaited, so southward we went, and in the end I was halfway to my 10,000 step goal on the fitbit before we even officially set off for the day.

It was a gorgeous morning on Long Sands, but high tide was approaching, which led to the funny sight of a huge stretch of empty beach, with big crowds of people clustered together on the very upper fringe.  (Not much of Long Sands is around at high tide.)  We started our walk down on the beach, and caught a little of a surfing competition as we went by.

Even though it added substantially to our mileage, we set off down the Cape Neddick peninsula in order to see the Nubble Light at the end.  Lots of people here, too, and it gratified us to see that they were having trouble finding parking spaces.

If we thought Long Sands was crowded, that was nothing to Short Sands, on the other side of the peninsula.  It also seems to have a high-tide problem, and every inch of sand seemed to be covered in humanity.  Bob and I were getting pretty warm by this time, so we found a spare bit of rocks on which to put our bags and took a quick dip in the water.  By the time we got out, the tide was threatening that spot, too.

One highlight on Shore Road — the church where we got married 18 years ago. We elected not to visit the Cliff House next door, where we had our reception, because of the very long, uphill driveway.

The water, by the way, is…bracing.  Last time we went to the beach in NH it was surprisingly not-frigid, and checking in at the Sea Latch we heard the woman at the desk tell someone, “The ocean is really warm.  They measured it at 68 this morning!”  (This was not meant for sarcasm.  68 is in fact very warm for the ocean in Maine.)  But alas, by the time we got to the beach, the currents had changed or something and the ocean was back to its usual breathtaking, ankle-numbing temperature.  Still, though it was not entirely pleasant to jump in, it felt very good afterward — and gave us a little chilling that would last well into the walk.

Perkins Cove

The walk today was similar to yesterday in that the start was pleasant and fun — some beaches to swim at, a nice restaurant for lunch in Short Sands, lots of beauty around to look at — but then we ended up on a long slog on a rather boring road that was not made for pedestrians.  This time it was Shore Road leading between York and Ogunquit, and for most of its 4.4-mile length it proved to be similar to the dreaded Brave Boat Harbor Road from yesterday.  In this case, we were at least occasionally rewarded with scenic water views.

The end of the walk really shone today, though.  After coming into Ogunquit, we took a side street and footbridge into incredibly scenic (and again, incredibly crowded and hard-to-park-in) Perkins Cove.  We took a break to have drinks at a restaurant overlooking the Atlantic (and oddly, staffed entirely with young Eastern European women.  We would later find this to be the case with many places in Ogunquit.)

The last mile was down the stunning Marginal Way footpath, which winds along the rocky coastline.  And the best part was that we knew exactly where we were going.  After our debacle trying to find a hotel in York, we decided to book ahead in Ogunquit — and through some kind of tripadvisor loophole were able to book the last available room in a B&B that, like almost everywhere, typically has a two-night minimum.  It’s right in the heart of town and is lovely, with a porch swing looking out over a broad lawn and the busy (oh, yes, it’s incredibly crowded here as well) streets (and also a nice lady who gave us Band-aids for our blisters).  We sat there at the end of the day, eating our ice cream, after a pleasant stroll around town and dinner at a gourmet pizza & craft beer restaurant.

Total mileage (not including side trips): 11.2 miles

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.

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.

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.