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 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.
