New England #8

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

New England #7

Made it to Bar Harbor ME yesterday. Rt. 1 in Maine is a rough old girl in many places and quite a bit of construction. Vickie and I were wondering how they would ever get it all finished before the "permafrost" sets in. You can tell there might be something to the winters here by the way their firewood stacks are often almost as big as the house. Most of our day yesterday was spent at Acadia National Park. This is one of the few National Parks on the East Coast. Basically it is a lot of islands and peninsulas that stick out into the Atlantic from the coast of Maine. Bar Harbor is pretty much completely surrounded by the National Park. Last I was here, many many years ago, Bar Harbor was a sleepy little town where you caught the ferry to Nova Scotia. Well you still catch the ferry here, but boy has it built up. Looking at some kind of local paper we picked up, 9 cruise ships are scheduled to dock here this week. One of the "cruisers" said the Queen Mary 2 was due here next Saturd ay. I was curious where cruise ships would come from to get to Bar Harbor. I asked one lady, and she said her ship sailed out of NYC with stops in Boston, Bar Harbor, Halifax, and some other places. This is really off-season for Acadia Park, but because of the cruise ships, it was slammed yesterday. Nothing like meeting a 48-passenger giant bus coming down the mountain road around a curve at you. However despite the droves of people, Acadia is a most beautiful place. The view from Cadillac Mt. at 1500+ feet above sea level is worth the trip. There is a park loop road that takes in most of the more popular sites. We spent our time on the loop with the roof down enjoying the park. Also there is a bus service that you can utilize to see the whole park. Since it was late in the day, we decided to stay in Bar Harbor. After the cruise ships pulled out around 5:00 (so they could get out past the 12 mile limit and open their casinos) the place was pretty empty. We enjoyed sitting on the ba lcony of our room at the Quality Inn with beautiful weather, and surprisingly few bugs. (oh and on the scorecard—this place didn’t get the memo, the curved shower rods were installed so that the shower area is now smaller than before) We later went across the road to something called The Saltwater Grill, and enjoyed the early bird specials. (makes me feel like a very old tourist to say early bird special) However in this case 1 of the early bird specials was a lobster, fries and slaw for $15.95. Great deal and it was good. I added an appetizer of steamed mussels and was in heaven. Miss Vickie ate the early bird sirloin tips in that she doesn’t do well with shellfish. I rounded it all off with a crisp Maine apple back at the room, and collapsed into a protein coma. Tomorrow, we plan to continue down the Maine coast on Rt.1 and eventually turn back inland before we get into the millions of folks called Boston. Oh and last night, Old Blue didn’t have to sleep alone for a change. He go t to snuggle up to a nice new maroon C6 with the same color top. I was hoping I might find a little Corvette pedal car when I went down this morning but nothing happened. (probably both boys) Ran down this morning to see the departure of the ship called "The Fast Cat" to Nova Scotia. It is this huge all aluminum catamaran car ferry with 38,000 hp (4 engines/9500) that runs from Bar Harbor to Yarmouth Nova Scotia at around 45 knots. Came back and went to breakfast at the same restaurant as last night. Usually isn’t possible to screw up breakfast but they did. Food was bad service was worse. More later.

Wes

New England #6

’m sitting here in a jacket after spraying myself with 98% Deet. I’m overlooking one of the most beautiful scenes on the trip so far. We lucked up and ended up in this cool old strip motel on the bank of some tidal river. We have sat here all evening watching the sun go down and the moon come up. We watched little shore birds fly in formation, we watched something that looked like the lock ness monster (neighbors later told us it was probably seals). We watched the old guy go out to the moored boat and adjust the moorings meanwhile messing up the whole mirror pool effect of the wide spot in the river. Vickie just took a picture of me writing this. It is impossible to put into words. The coast of Maine is unlike anything we are accustomed to. There are no beaches, just rocky coastline. We lucked up and found this place in some little town called Machias. Earlier this afternoon we were at Quoddy Head State Park in Lubec, ME which is the furthermost East point in the continental U S. There is a nice old lighthouse there and the water view was beautiful. The tides in this area run 28 feet. Everywhere today we saw the low tide cause it was at 3:50 p.m. The high tide is supposed to be at 9:30 tonight, and low is at 3 am (I’ll be sure to see that one) and high is again at 9:30 am tomorrow. Vickie just reminded me we have a full moon overhead. I didn’t realize it. It might not be full but it is 17/18^ths full. I mean, you couldn’t pay money (which we did) for a setting like this. The motel is populated by a mixture of tourists and construction workers. It is interesting. I have overheard big old burly construction workers on the cell phone telling their families how incredible the view is here. I believe I’m going to have to keep this place a secret to only my closest friends. Put this place on your list of places to visit on the coast of Maine. Oh it’s a ring around the moon---what does that mean? I’m going to have to look that up. I just can’t st op looking at how beautiful this setting is. I’ll post some pictures later.

Yesterday I made myself a note to mention the cute little coffee makers they have started using in most motel rooms. They have little disposable baskets with coffee already in them, and they brew only one cup at a time. Also don’t have warmers so you don’t have to worry about leaving them on. You brew directly into the Styrofoam cup you drink out of. So now instead of biodegradable paper filter packs and coffee grounds, we have an additional plastic tray per cup of coffee. Much simpler for motel though and people don’t take the coffee packs with them to use later. (unless they have one of these curious little machines at home.)

Helen’s restaurant is in the same parking lot as our motel and is supposed to have good food. We are going to wander across the parking lot and partake of their fine food some time this evening. We stopped today at Calais at the Maine tourist bureau. We picked up a lot of literature for our trip down Rt. 1 and two very pretty free Maine apples. We asked the nice lady if there was a good diner in town for lunch. She directed us to Karen’s diner, which she said was the most popular. We found it quickly. They had posted that their off season hours were only till 2 p.m. on Mon and Tues. We got there about 1:15 and they took us in. The menu had all sorts of cool things. I ended up with a cup of split pea and ham soup (excellent) and a "Haddock Sandwich" Boy was it good. Vickie ordered Macaroni and cheese with a diner roll. It was quite interesting made with a vegamel sauce laced with cheese. Well it's later and we are off for the restaurant across the parking lot for dinner . (back) Food was pretty good, I had stroganoff and Vickie had a hot pork sandwich with gravy. I brought back a piece of Maine apple pie for later. Rose early this a.m. in time to see the sun rise over the water (a Kodak moment) then proceeded to Helen’s Restaurant once again for breakfast. We got back to our room and the water had risen to within feet of the deck. Going to upload some pictures to share and get ready to go. Headed for Bar Harbor today.

Wes