No Sleep Till Popham!
When I go back to Maine, it’s usually a quick trip that doesn’t involve anything more than visiting family and doing a few basic chores for them. After a long trip to get there, and facing an equally tiring trip back, the last thing I usually want to do is sightseeing or a lot of driving around.
However, I recently brought Inna along on her first visit to Maine in decades, while my brother and niece were in also town. Because of that, we spent a lot of our time doing touristy stuff and taking photos, which makes the trip worth writing about and sharing.
We attempted to leave Pittsburgh Tuesday afternoon, but were thwarted at the gate when our first flight was delayed beyond our connection’s departure time. Worse yet, our fallback was a 6am flight the next morning, which meant we had to get out of bed at 3am!
After a pizza and way too little sleep, we drove back to the airport, to discover a longer security line than I’ve ever encountered in Pittsburgh. But we got through it, flew to Dulles, and happily made our connection to Portland. The only redeeming part of the early morning flights was the view as we flew directly above Boston.
Landing in Portland a little early, we grabbed our rental car and I took Inna on a quick tour of infinitely-famous Portland Head Light and the Eastern Prom before driving up to Augusta. Inna met the family, and we spent the afternoon swimming at Three Cornered Pond, which (as an ocean swimmer) was a new experience for Inna. After demolishing a roast turkey breast, we checked into our hotel and passed out.
Thursday Inna and I went off on our own and explored the coast. We drove up Mt. Battie, which provided an awesome view of Camden and the islands peeking above a thick sea fog. We also explored the wooded, rocky shoreline along Camden Hills State Park, which was interesting and new to me. Then came the inevitable tourist shopping crawl through Camden. After grabbing lunch, we were off down the coast to Popham Beach, where we hiked across the huge expanse of sand and dipped our feet in the frigid Atlantic Ocean.
Then it was time to head back to Augusta to meet the family for Thai food (or in Inna’s case, sushi). Although we covered a lot of territory, Inna and I hadn’t pushed ourselves beyond our already-exhausted state, and wound up having a really nice day together.
Friday was a whole-family expedition back down to the coast for a traditional lobster dinner at Shaw’s Wharf in New Harbor. Then we went on to Pemaquid Point, where Inna and I crawled around on the rocks for a few minutes. I was a little disappointed that the rest of the family wanted to turn homeward after visiting the gift shop, rather than spending any time enjoying the surf crashing on the rugged rocks. But even I was tired from eating and so much gallivanting around, and the responsible parties had to be home in time for a cable serviceman to hook up my mother’s new tv. So we headed home.
Inna and I said our goodbyes before going to the hotel, since we had to be up at 5am the next day (again!) to catch our 8am return flight. We hopped through Newark (our original layover location), where we had plenty of time to hang out before our afternoon flight back to Pittsburgh.
We were both dragging and eager to get home when we took the airport shuttle back to our car, only to discover that the battery was dead, putting up one final roadblock between us and getting home. That was corrected after an hour of sitting in a hot parking lot. We eventually pulled into our driveway and received a loud welcome from a our cat peering from the open bedroom window.
It was a very nice trip, and Inna and I both really enjoyed seeing the sights along the coast. It was unfortunate that we lost a day in Maine due to the travel mess. And all the early-morning travel thoroughly exhausted us, so we were both ecstatic when we finally got back home.
Oh yeah, and for the whole photo album, click here.