Coastal Main (Monday, August 24th, 2015)

When we woke up this morning, we took a relaxing walk through Tony and Sarah's neighborhood, and ended up at the boat ramp for their harbor.  It was such a peaceful place with the fog hiding the far shoreline.

A view from the ramp

A lobster boat mooring in the harbor

The dingys used to access the larger boats in the harbor

When we returned from our walk, Sarah had cornbread muffins waiting for us for breakfast, and had packed us a lunch to take with us on our day's adventures.  

We headed out with Tony at about 9:00 to do some sightseeing. There are so many interesting places around this beautiful area that Tony and Sarah call home.  In the small town of Brooklin, Maine, he took us by the house of E. B. White, who wrote "Charlottes Web".  It is a beautiful white house hidden by mature trees.

The house that E.B. White lived in when he wrote "Charolette's Web"

As you are looking through the next few pictures, close your eyes and imagine the movie.  These pictures are exactly what we remember in the movie from when we watched it with our daughters as they were growing up.

The barn where Charlotte's Web took place

The fairgrounds that Charlotte and Wilbur moved to together

In addition to E B White's house, there are also 8 boat builders in Brooklin. One off these, called Brooklin Boat Yard and is run by Steve White, EB White's grandson.  

Noel Paul Stookey of Peter Paul and Mary also settled in this area.  He now records in an old converted chicken coop on his property.  

Tony and Sarah are so knowledgable about this area, and have stories that go back many generations.

We stopped at the LL Bean outlet in the small town of Ellsworth, Maine where Route1 and 1A come together, and from there headed toward the Schoodic Peninsula and to a wonderful place called Little Moose Island.  We parked our car and headed out for the island.  This island can be reached by land during low tide, but is cut off during high tide, so it is important to plan your hike around the tides so as not to be stranded.  When you live in Colorado, you don't plan any part of our day around the tides, but we are finding that here in Maine, tides are very important to pay attention to.  

You can reach the island by land at low tide

Steve and Tony crossing over to Little Moose Island

Gorgeous hike on Little Moose Island

Sarah had packed a wonderful lunch for us, so we were fortunate enough to enjoy our lunch on the cliffs of Little Moose Island, watching the waves break on the rugged shore below us. 

Below is a short video of Tony telling us about Little Moose Island

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FlneWaHaPE

As we were leaving the island, we saw these beautiful wisps of fog on the mainland.

And these fun tide pools

And these hairy rocks.  They just needed eyes and a smile and they would be complete!

After our hike we stopped at the Schoodic Research Center which is a huge education facility on the peninsula, complete with dining and lodging.

On the way back we stopped at a place called Tidal Falls. It is a narrow inlet with rocks, that looks like a river that flows both ways as the tides come in and out. This was a very unique experience.   

We are so lucky to have our friends to show us these amazing sights.  We would never be able to find them on our own.  Then before heading back to the house, our last stop was at Jordan's for a quick ice cream in Ellsworth, Maine.  

They have every flavor you could ever want in hard or soft serve

Then we all met back up for dinner at a great restaurant called the BarnCastle.  It is a large old farmhouse that has been converted to a restaurant.  They had a great selection, so we all had some mussels and nachos for starters and then finished up with pizza and salads.

BarnCastle Restaurant

What an amazing day we had exploring the area and hearing the stories to support the sights we were seeing.  We ended the day back at Sarah and Tony's wonderful home where we continued to share stories about our lives.  A day that we will remember for a lifetime...especially as it is now captured here! 

Boston and Portland (Saturday, August 22nd, 2015)

We dropped our oldest daughter off at the airport this morning, so she could go see her husband for the weekend, and we will move our youngest daughter back up to school tomorrow.  It's always a bit of a struggle for us when our kids head back to school, and our house once again becomes very quiet, so we got on-line to see if we could find any cheap flights.  Not knowing where else to start, we started looking in Portland, Oregon.  We have never been to the northwest coast, so thought it might be fun.  Steve was able to find cheap flights, but rental cars were really high.  Finally, he called me over to look at this car rental he had found.  It was a great rate, but I quickly realized that it was in Portland, Maine, not Portland, Oregon!  So I suggested that maybe we wanted to go see the north east coast instead.  He laughed, and then said, "Why not!  Let's see what we can find for flights".  So he started looking at flights, and behold, there were cheap flights into Boston.  Score!

When we realized that we might be heading to the north east coast, we instantly thought of a couple of families that we know in that area, so we contacted both of them on very short notice to see if they might be available for dinner during the next week or so.  Both of them were available, and seemed excited that we were coming their way.  As we talked more with our friends, it became clear that we would need to head north out of Boston first, and up into Maine, so that we could see our friends in Maine first, then we could take our time getting back to the Boston area to see our other friends.

Our Maine friends, Tony and Sarah gave us a really nice list of things to stop and see on our way up toward them, so we started planning our route, and decided that we would spend our first night in Portland, Maine.  It is a good distance from Logan Airport, and will get us heading in the right direction, but as we started looking at hotels, we realized that even though everything else is cheap, hotels are not.  We decided to stay at the Holiday Inn by the Bay, since we usually get some perks at Holiday Inn because we stay with them so often, but it was going to be $400/night.  Yikes.  That's a lot for a Holiday Inn!  So Steve decided to log into his IHG account to see if he had any points that he could use to help out with the cost a little bit.  And to our surprise, we just reached our one year anniversary with them, and were being rewarded with a free night.  Could this be working out any better?  So we booked our hotel using our free night stay.  Let's hope that the rest of our trip goes this well!!!

We landed in Boston, Massachusetts at 4:50 ET, and found the bus for the rental car lots.  We had booked the car through the Budget Fast Break club (which is free to join), so we were able to skip the line at the budget counter and go straight out to the lot.  In the lot kiosk, there was no line at all, and we quickly got our car and headed out for Portland, Maine.  We were dying to see the ocean, so we took the long way to Portland, via highway 1A, which runs along the coast through the small towns of Hampton and Rye.  This was a more scenic route, but when we got into the town of Hampton, there was a seawall for quite a ways which blocked our view, but soon it was gone, and we enjoyed the view of the ocean as we drove along. 

The beautiful beach in Hampton, New Hampshire

 As we drove down the highway, we periodically saw signs that read "Watch for moose on roadway".  We got a kick out of this, but you see these types of signs everywhere, it's just the animals that change.  In Colorado, it's elk, in Arizona is burros, and in Maine is moose!   When we finally reached Portland, Steve was the first to get out of the car, and as he opened his door the smell of fish hit us like a freight train.  Wow, we're definitely not used to that.

It was dark when we got to our hotel, and apparently, we were the last ones to check in because the only room they had left for us was a smoking room.  In Colorado they don't even have smoking rooms as an option, so we really didn't expect this.  She asked us to go up and check the room out, and we had to admit that it was really bad.
We aren't used to cigarette smoke at all, so we asked them if there was anything they could do to freshen up the room, so they gave us two drink coupons to use while we waited for it to be freshened up.   We each enjoyed a complimentary drink and then they called us to go check it out again.  It was much better so we took it. The room had a great view, and was a great room except for the smoking issue.  

Around 9:00 we  took the hotel shuttle to J's Oyster for dinner.  It came highly rated on Trip Advisor and by the hotel staff, so we gave it a try.  It was an interesting place.  It was a small seafood shack right on the bay with both indoor and outdoor seating.  

J's Oyster with outdoor seating to the right and the restaurant to the left

 We chose to sit inside since it was cooling off for the night, and as we entered, it was a definite bar atmosphere. 

Some of the food was very good, and some was very average, which we found very interesting.  All of the entrees came with bread and a salad.  The bread consisted of a basket of soft white rolls and the salads had been pre-plated and stacked, with a prepackaged envelope of dressing on the side. Water was served in little plastic cups, and yet our beers were served in beer glasses from each of the respective brewery's, and the entrees were fantastic. Steve had boulibaise I had seafood casserole. Both were very good, with nice quantities.  Mine wasn't very healthy, as it was in a butter and white wine sauce, but Steve's was very healthy in a light tomato and wine sauce.  

We had a few leftovers, which we were excited to finish at another time. We chose to walk home, instead of taking the shuttle back, and on the way walked by a love lock fence.

We also stopped at an outdoor venue with a live band. It was very fun and the band was great. We got back to the room very late and enjoyed a great night's sleep!