More Stories from the Road

R.J. and I are enjoying life on the road. It's a joy to see so much of our beautiful country in such a small space of time! It's great to have something new every day. Even so, I am beginning to get ready to settle into one place, which is good because today is the day that will happen! However, before we get to our big payoff (Prince Edward Island!!!), I wanted to share some stories and images of our last 24 hours.  

After a simple, motel breakfast, R.J. and I left our resting spot in New Hampshire in light rain. As we drove, light rain became heavy rain. It was hard to see traffic and impossible to see scenery beyond the edges of the road. The heavy rain continued as we entered Maine and for an hour or so after. Eventually, we “outran” the rain and began to see the Maine sights. The landscape is different from what we have been driving through for the past couple of days. I absolutely loved the glimpses of ocean we kept getting. Aside from the rain and the scenery, the most noteworthy event of our time on the road was when we took a little side trip to follow the signs to a Visitor’s Center. I kept seeing signs for these places and thought it might be a good stop for a bathroom break. It was not along the border of Maine but rather tucked away in the city of Bath in an almost impossible location to see or access. Once we finally saw where it was, we had to drive around the block and approach it again to find the parking area. Then after we used the bathrooms there, we had to wind around a couple of blind intersections to make our way back to the Interstate. That was an adventure!

Our lunch stop on this day was in Lincolnville, ME. We have stopped there on our other two road trip to PEI. We discovered it on our first trip, on a day we were a bit grumpy after a lot of driving. We were just driving along when we pulled around a corner and ocean filled our view, with diagonal parking right along the street! We pulled into a spot and watched school kids frolic on and end of the year school trip as we ate our lunch in the car. It fully refreshed us. So that was ten years ago. When we stopped again five years ago, we enjoyed an enormous bowl of ice cream at the new little shop right next to “our” beach, as we arrived there mid-afternoon. I will say that a bit of the magic was gone this time around. We arrived at low tide, so the beach wasn’t as beautiful, and it was a cloudy, chilly afternoon so no one was on the beach. Additionally, you could see how these past few years have been hard on this little town. But in the end, we ate our lunch with an ocean view and we even got a bowl of ice cream – not close to as huge as it was last time, but just right for our dessert. It was good to see our old friend, the Linconville beach.

The next stop was Acadia National Park. I made the mistake of just entering “Acadian National Park” into Google Maps rather than putting "visitor center" in there, so we drove around a little extra before arriving. That made me sad, because we only had a couple of hours for Acadia this time around. Still, we got our parks pass, and the GOOD news is that I now qualify for a senior pass: $20 for a whole year getting into any National Parks we want! Now we need to plan more trips! We drove to the spot where we wanted to hike and did a little “out and back” since our time was limited. After that, we drove around the park a bit before heading to a grocery store and then our motel for the night.

A cedar waxwing posed by the parking lot

The view across Eagle Lake in Acadia National Park

Me, loving the great outdoors

The merganser who swam close to us!

The motel for the night is a story all its own. As we drove up to the place, there were construction materials everywhere. Garbage bags were piled up by the door (full of construction waste) and with windows completely open or broken for some of the rooms, this place positively did NOT look open. We began to wonder if our dear friend and travel agent, Amy Glandon, had messed things up here! We went to the front doors and checked in, as it was indeed open. We had to drive way down to the far end of the building to enter, parking in the one spot available between all the workers’ trucks. We entered with caution. We opened the door to our room and were blown away! It was a suite with a kitchenette and looked brand new. This must have been one of the first rooms renovated. It’s way fancier than our house, with a lighted mirror in the bathroom and shiny white countertops in the kitchen. It was delightful to eat our supper on real plates! The one downside of note was that at the end of the day when we looked at the bottoms of our feet, we realized that the floor (not carpet, but vinyl plank flooring) was pretty dirty. I’m sure it’s hard to keep construction dust from getting in everywhere, and everything else in the room was very clean. Anyway, the bed was super comfortable and we slept well. It goes to show you really shouldn't jump to conclusions, right?! You just never know what gems you will find when you step through the chaos. And now...we are ready to make the final leg of our journey to PEI!

Entry to the motel. Note the equipment and the garbage bags.

This just looked so wrong. We had to drive past this to get to our room.

The beautiful room we stayed in! It was amazing and brand new.