Left Bar Harbor yesterday and headed south along Rt. 1. The coast of Maine is quite beautiful and the water vistas just keep on coming. Yesterday in Maine, however, it was 92° in some places and above 90 almost all day. (don’t anyone tell Al Gore).
Made myself a note of a couple of soapbox items yesterday. Has anyone noticed the "Project Planet" placards hanging in motel rooms nowadays? It is the motel owners looking to save money masquerading as saving the planet. The placards encourage you to reuse your towels and only have your sheets changed when they need it. (boy that’s novel—seems like exactly what we do at home) I went on the web site of Project Planet, and guess what business they are in? You got it, selling stuff to hang in motel rooms. On their sight they tout some motel chain that was going to save $1.3 million with their program, while saving 4 million gallons of water Seems to me the $1.3 million is way more important than the water when everything else at the motel is disposable. (especially the new little coffee pots with the extra plastic disposable thingie) And oh yea, how about the water saving shower head you have to run around under to get wet, directly across from an old style 3 gal per flush toilet? Also, it allows the illegal alien room people to handle way more rooms per person if they don’t have to change the sheets. I don’t mind that they are saving water, but don’t tell me you are doing it to save the planet. (I’m dumb, but not that dumb)
The second box I want to get on is, who are these guys that design motel rooms? How come the air conditioner always blows up into the drapes causing you to have to engineer some kind of holding device for the drapes to keep the spotlights aimed directly at your window out? You know my ongoing position on curved shower rods. This place got the installation right, but added an interesting new wrinkle. They have magnets in the bottom of the shower curtain—with a fiberglass tub. Must have missed high school physics class. And what is it with desks and no place to plug in anything?
The third soapbox item is tourism. Dawned on me day before yesterday at Acadia—this horde of tourists doesn’t really even include the Boomers yet. Vickie and I are "Early Early Boomers" in that we are early boomers and retired early. The make up of the crowd at Acadia was all mostly older folks like 65-75 and beyond. In addition most of the folks we see on the road are this same advanced age. I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like in 10 years when the Boomers really start retiring. You better get your National Park reservations 3 years in advance.
Along the way down the coast, we passed through Bucksport Maine that calls itself "The Center Of The Known Universe" It is the site of the British Battle "Disaster On The Penobscot in 1779" and also site of the new Pneobscot Narrows bridge and observatory. The bridge was very interesting. It has nitrogen pressurized chambers the suspension cables run through to prevent corrosion. It also has an observatory in one of the 420’ towers. As we proceeded further down the coast of Maine yesterday, we decided we had seen enough water vistas, and headed inland. My great navigator found some Maine back roads (read barely roads) and we cut across to Rt. 202 which we intend to follow for a while. Oh and something I wanted to mention, when the State of Maine posts a sign that says bump, they really mean it. (like 1 mph bumps) Also I was introduced to a new sign yesterday called "Frost Heave" The frost heave sign is usually followed by a road that looks like the aftermath of an earthquake, bu t with more rounded edges. We set our sights on Rochester NH for the night. Well turns out when we got to Rochester there were 3 motels. One that really fooled us was named Residence Inn. I don’t believe it will be entering the Marriott system anytime soon. The other two were its brothers bad and worse. So we headed on to Concord NH which was the next bold (on the map) city. Our GPS showed motels there, and we had coupons for several. By this time it was getting late and we were tired. Our first stop was a Fairfield by Marriott. They were full but the Day’s Inn down the road was supposed to have rooms. To make a long story short, we got one of the last two rooms at the Day’s Inn, cause it seems like there were a bunch of Democrats in NH having a debate. The Day’s Inn refused to honor our coupon siting a special event. What was that special event? Not the Democratic debate but Fall Foliage! Guy said oh they’re coming in from all over for it. However the coupon is valid for September and October which is when the fall foliage is, so we are a little miffed. We’re going to write the Room Saver folks and the National Day’s Inn folks just for the venting of it. (we weren’t dumb enough to not take the room, regardless of coupon or not) Since it was late, we called for Chinese delivery, and had a great room picnic in front of the TV. Then right after dinner, the water died in the whole motel. It was back before we went to bed, but made for a harrowing night. We’re heading East tomorrow. Good Continental at the Day’s Inn this morning and quite a bit of rain. Made instant mud on the car. Looks like it might continue for a day or so. More later.
Wes
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