In the Midst of Maine
Maine is a beautiful state. The forests, the coastline, the quaint towns, the super nice people and L.L. Bean :) have made my mini-vacation, which I am in the midst of, just splendid.
This trip started on a whim idea to come up early to Maine. I had to attend an NCURA conference in Portland, Maine on behalf of my firm from Monday-Wednesday. (I'm actually at the conference, typing this up instead of attending a conference session, but whatever. :) I'm representing the firm, which is a "gold sponsor" at the conference; I basically hand out marketing materials hoping someone will engage us in some business. Someone tried to pick me up at the last conference I attended for the firm, so we'll see how this one turns out. ) Lawrence and I were hoping to go on a cycling/camping trip this weekend, so we just decided to come up early and explore Maine a bit.
We decided to go to Freeport, home of the L.L. Bean retail store that is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! The store's door doesn't even have locks- out of control. Freeport had the cheapest camping we could find around Portland. We arrived Saturday evening with just enough daylight to set up our tent. We went into town and stopped at the massive L.L. Bean store, where they had all the tote bags and backpacks you could ever want, and they could all be monogrammed in 5 minutes. We then went to the supermarket to buy some food supplies, i.e. smores supplies, and headed back to our campsite.
True to form, Lawrence and I decided to cook dinner with light only from our Discovery Channel lantern and flashlights, all of which had dying batteries as their only juice. (We like to make things more challenging than they have to be- like our entire roadtrip around France. See Lawrence's blog for more information.) We made tacos. The beef took an hour to cook since it was so windy and the flame couldn't quite heat the pan properly, and it only takes 15 minutes usually. We could barely keep a campfire going, and the Hershey's chocolate bar we bought was too thick to be melted by a hot marshmallow, but we had a great time. :) I've never seen the moonlight actually light up the area; living in crowded, urban areas, I live by the lights on the street, not the moon, at night. The stars were so plentiful in the sky. The air was fresh. It was a welcome change from crowded Boston.
The next day, we went on a lovely bike trip from Freeport to Brunswick, home of Bowdoin College, for over 20 miles round trip. We stopped by Wolfe's Neck State Park where we saw a beautiful coastline with oddly shaped rocks as terrain and an ospry breeding ground. We passed by several farms and quaint Maine houses, and just about everyone we passed on the way to Brunswick stopped to say hello. We made it to Brunswick where we walked around the town and at a restaurant called Somethings Fishy, a hole in the wall seafood joint whose food just hit the spot after a 10 mile bike ride over rolling hills. We went to the local flea market and antiques store before heading back to Freeport. We took a different route back, which had some really tough hills. I only had to walk my bike up three of them, and for those three, I made it most of the way up on my bike. When we got back to Freeport, Lawrence and I discovered that my misaligned brakes had been on the whole time! I didn't notice because the roads of Maine are not well maintained, so I thought the resistance was normal. I was incredulous that I climbed so many hills with my brakes on and didn't feel so bad about walking up those three hills!
We switched campsites and set up our tent along the shore. By then it was dark, and we had learned our lesson the other night about cooking in the dark, so we went to a random Thai restaurant in the area, which was surprisingly good. Stuffed, we headed back to the campsite where we of course had another fire and made more smores. It was sooo cool to camp by the water. We camped on the shores of a bay that lead into the Atlantic. The next morning, we decided to wake up to see the sunrise, which was an early 5:23AM. Lawrence made yet another campfire, and we watched the sunrise over the tree-lined horizon of the shores of the bay. It was beautiful. We decided to keep the fire going until about 9:00AM. We then sat on the beach, which was a good 20 feet lower than the campsite, and skipped stones across the water. It was idyllic.
We then drove to Portland, Maine, where we are now. Portland is quaint and funky and so unprententious. We've already had some delicious sushi and met some interesting people. We have another couple days here and are excited to explore the town. Apparently tennis and cycling are a big deal here and the seafood restaurants are authentic, so we're already psyched.
This trip started on a whim idea to come up early to Maine. I had to attend an NCURA conference in Portland, Maine on behalf of my firm from Monday-Wednesday. (I'm actually at the conference, typing this up instead of attending a conference session, but whatever. :) I'm representing the firm, which is a "gold sponsor" at the conference; I basically hand out marketing materials hoping someone will engage us in some business. Someone tried to pick me up at the last conference I attended for the firm, so we'll see how this one turns out. ) Lawrence and I were hoping to go on a cycling/camping trip this weekend, so we just decided to come up early and explore Maine a bit.
We decided to go to Freeport, home of the L.L. Bean retail store that is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! The store's door doesn't even have locks- out of control. Freeport had the cheapest camping we could find around Portland. We arrived Saturday evening with just enough daylight to set up our tent. We went into town and stopped at the massive L.L. Bean store, where they had all the tote bags and backpacks you could ever want, and they could all be monogrammed in 5 minutes. We then went to the supermarket to buy some food supplies, i.e. smores supplies, and headed back to our campsite.
True to form, Lawrence and I decided to cook dinner with light only from our Discovery Channel lantern and flashlights, all of which had dying batteries as their only juice. (We like to make things more challenging than they have to be- like our entire roadtrip around France. See Lawrence's blog for more information.) We made tacos. The beef took an hour to cook since it was so windy and the flame couldn't quite heat the pan properly, and it only takes 15 minutes usually. We could barely keep a campfire going, and the Hershey's chocolate bar we bought was too thick to be melted by a hot marshmallow, but we had a great time. :) I've never seen the moonlight actually light up the area; living in crowded, urban areas, I live by the lights on the street, not the moon, at night. The stars were so plentiful in the sky. The air was fresh. It was a welcome change from crowded Boston.
The next day, we went on a lovely bike trip from Freeport to Brunswick, home of Bowdoin College, for over 20 miles round trip. We stopped by Wolfe's Neck State Park where we saw a beautiful coastline with oddly shaped rocks as terrain and an ospry breeding ground. We passed by several farms and quaint Maine houses, and just about everyone we passed on the way to Brunswick stopped to say hello. We made it to Brunswick where we walked around the town and at a restaurant called Somethings Fishy, a hole in the wall seafood joint whose food just hit the spot after a 10 mile bike ride over rolling hills. We went to the local flea market and antiques store before heading back to Freeport. We took a different route back, which had some really tough hills. I only had to walk my bike up three of them, and for those three, I made it most of the way up on my bike. When we got back to Freeport, Lawrence and I discovered that my misaligned brakes had been on the whole time! I didn't notice because the roads of Maine are not well maintained, so I thought the resistance was normal. I was incredulous that I climbed so many hills with my brakes on and didn't feel so bad about walking up those three hills!
We switched campsites and set up our tent along the shore. By then it was dark, and we had learned our lesson the other night about cooking in the dark, so we went to a random Thai restaurant in the area, which was surprisingly good. Stuffed, we headed back to the campsite where we of course had another fire and made more smores. It was sooo cool to camp by the water. We camped on the shores of a bay that lead into the Atlantic. The next morning, we decided to wake up to see the sunrise, which was an early 5:23AM. Lawrence made yet another campfire, and we watched the sunrise over the tree-lined horizon of the shores of the bay. It was beautiful. We decided to keep the fire going until about 9:00AM. We then sat on the beach, which was a good 20 feet lower than the campsite, and skipped stones across the water. It was idyllic.
We then drove to Portland, Maine, where we are now. Portland is quaint and funky and so unprententious. We've already had some delicious sushi and met some interesting people. We have another couple days here and are excited to explore the town. Apparently tennis and cycling are a big deal here and the seafood restaurants are authentic, so we're already psyched.
posted by Christina at 9:40 AM
1 Comments:
maybe we can even move to maine and become "maine-iacs!"
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