I'M GOING TO MAINE!!!!
How do you ever thank someone for sharing their two week vacation with you, to turn into your dream vacation/retirement celebration extraordinaire? There are no words sufficient. So, I'll just tell you the story and let you see for yourself how awesome my daughter, Misty and her husband, Jonathan are, and both their kids, Craig and Megan.
July 22: We started out from their home in Charlotte, with their Toyota Sequoia loaded to the brim inside, dog crates folded down and strapped to the luggage rack on top, and their four bicycles anchored securely on the rear bumper. The first leg of the trip was for a double treat: first we were meeting my son, Rusty and his family, in our old home town of Oak Ridge TN and spending Saturday with them and all five grand kids at the Science and Energy Museum, and having lunch together at Rusty's favorite high school hangout - Billy's Time Out Deli. That evening after Rusty's family left for home Craig, Megan and I walked to Chick-fil-A for dinner while Misty and Jonathan went to her 20 year high school reunion. The kids are so awesome to be around, and we have great fun together. Craig had bought himself a laptop with his own money, so he stayed up in the rooms with both dogs, Nick and Leo, while I sat out by the pool and watched Megan play mermaid for about an hour. The next morning we loaded back up and headed out on the first day of our two day drive to Bar Harbor, Maine.
July 24: Jonathan drove, and drove, and drove....he is such a great sport about taking the family on long vacations and never complains about all the driving. I saw scenery I had never seen before, and enjoyed sharing the middle seat with Megan and both dogs, who slept pretty much the entire trip up and back! Craig had his own little 'cave' in the rear seat, and seemed content there. We stopped for the night at the Hilton in Stamford CT, and our room, yes, ROOM (all five people and two dogs in crates) was on the 10th floor. Not fun taking two dogs up and down the elevator to 'go potty', no matter how well they behaved. We managed just fine, and had a great breakfast in the Executive Suite before heading out for the rest of the trip.
July 25: On the road again, oh yes! We stopped in Freeport, ME at the LLBean store. Wow, it is HUGE! It's actually store(S) and we spent a long time there. We finally arrived at our 'home away from home' about 8 p.m. and unloaded the car, ordered a pizza for supper and crashed, all exhausted but excited to be there. It was about 55 degrees that night. Ahhhh.
Misty had found us the cutest little house! "The Head of the Harbor Overlook" was a three bedroom one bath cottage right on Main Street in Southwest Harbor, ME. We were directly across the street from the harbor, with a fantastic view from the living room window! We spent the day getting settled in, buying groceries, playing games, and walking into town (all of a 10 minute easy walk) to see what was available there to eat and do. For dinner that night we went to a 'lobster pound', where they bring the lobsters right from the boat to the pot, and you choose which one you want cooked, go sit on a screened in deck over the water, and have a very messy but delicious fresh 'lobstah dinnah'.
I forgot to mention that two bedrooms were upstairs, and the bathroom was downstairs, so the old lady got to pick her room first. I chose to room with Megan in the bunk bed room downstairs. It was so sweet to be able to share a room with my granddaughter for ten days, and whisper and giggle into the night! I also forgot to mention that the heavy truck and work traffic on Main Street, about 20 ft from our window, started up about 4:30 a.m. just about the same time that daylight started showing through the blinds. ARRRGGGHHH!!! This is vacation, for crying out loud! I didn't want a 4:30 wake-up call daily, so devised a way to cover the windows at night with black plastic bags. It helped a lot, and I managed to sleep through the traffic till nearly 6 a.m. every day!
We did so many fun things, and saw some of the most magnificent natural beauty I have ever seen. The Maine coast is not 'beachy' like our sandy SC beaches; it is rugged, rocky with nothing underfoot in many places but huge flat granite boulders that seem to run for miles. Even the place they had named "Sand Beach" was just crushed gravel, no real sand, and the water was freezing even this late in the summer. I did step into it, up to my ankles and took a picture of my feet in the water to prove I really did 'get in the water' in Maine, ha ha! We had great food everywhere we went, and the restaurants were all small, quaint, family places and no 'chain restaurant' places anywhere except in Ellsberg where we went to find a Walmart and the LLBean outlet - yes, outlet!!
Here are some of the trip highlights, for me anyway:
1) Actually completing a 2.7 mile 'hike' around Jordan Pond. This was over a trail that at first was nicely paved with rocks, then was over larger rocks, then was NO trail but make your own way over huge boulders sticking out into the lake and you needed to be a mountain goat to get through, and finally over a wooden plank trail over mushy marsh, and sometimes it was three planks wide, sometimes it was two planks wide, and sometimes ONE PLANK wide and there were no handrails. Quite a challenge for someone with tendencies to vertigo, and terrible balance on a good day. But I did it, and told the kids that I had hiked in Maine now, and didn't need to do anymore hiking!
2) Went to Cadillac Mountain and saw a great view from this rare pink granite mountain. We went back there one morning at 4:30 and watched the sunrise, the first place in the US to see it rise every day. Breathtaking!
3) We saw lots of lighthouses, the best one being Pemaquid Point Lighthouse. I have a beautiful watercolor of that one, painted by my sister, Deidre, as a 25th anniversary gift for Terry and me. I had been looking at that painting for 16 years, hoping to someday get to see it in person. Dream fulfilled.
4) We took a picnic lunch to the coast, and went to Schoodic Peninsula where we saw the awesome sight of the waves crashing into the rocks and sending up huge plumes of spray. Great pictures from there!
5) My birthday was spent on a whale watching cruise. We actually saw 8 whales that hung around for about half an hour, and I felt I had my birthday prayer answered, since the two boats out before ours had not seen any whales at all! Whales on my birthday - how awesome!! Dinner was in Bar Harbor at Pupununi's, in the fresh air on their patio, and the lobster bisque and lobster empanadas were unbelievable!
6) A couple of days the boys did outdoor guy-things, and the girls did things we enjoy more. Misty, Megan and I took a 2-hour horse drawn carriage ride on the Carriage Trails in Acadia National Park to see all the pretty stone bridges. One day we went to two gardens, Thuya Garden and Lodge, and then Asticou Azalea Garden. Such breathtaking beauty! Total flowers at Thuya, and total shrubs and landscaping at Asticou, but equally awesome in their own ways. Asticou has a Zen sand garden, and we got to watch the caretaker 'grooming' the sand, making amazing patterns with big wooden rakes. That night, Jonathan took Megan and me to tour the Atlantic Brewing Company, and we came home with some great local beer and blueberry sodas for the two kids...they had blueberry sodas every meal we ate out, and every day at the house!
I know I have left out a lot. We cooked great meals at the house, had lots of relaxation on the front lawn watching the harbor and the tourists walking by on their way into town in a never-ending parade of strange clothes, shoes, and languages. We shopped at all sorts of quaint stores, ate at all sorts of quaint restaurants, and walked into town at least once every day. Megan and I walked into town one morning and had ice cream cones, oh wonder of wonders - ice cream for breakfast! The weather was awesome, in the 50's at night and rarely up to 80 during the days - while back home they had heat index of 114 one day. Great timing, Misty and Jonathan!! We all got along great, the dogs got along great, the house was cute and clean with everything remodeled and brand new, and even though Craig was getting sick with fever and a very bad sore throat that ended up at a doctor's and antibiotics, he never complained and was a real trooper. Misty and Jonathan had done a wonderful job of planning the trip and activities. They had been to the area several times before, and knew where to avoid and where to be sure to go! The trip home took two more days of driving, poor Jonathan, and the first one was in hours of a torrential rain. Again I sing his praises, so much patience and great driving skills!
As vacations go, it was a dream-come-true for me. As for retirement celebrations, it was the icing on the cake. If I had listened to people at work and hung on until the hospital sold, I would surely have been in the big layoff that happened on my birthday. True, I would have made a little more money this year, and could have drawn unemployment. But none of that was worth the soul-filling, memory-making adventures that I have had this summer. I would never have been able to take that much time off from work and would have missed out on these magnificent things. God has blessed me beyond belief, and I give Him thanks every day, several times a day, for allowing me to retire and still have enjoyment in life. I really am going to be okay. It was the right decision, the best one I have made since being on my own again, and I can't wait to see what is coming up to write about next!!!!!
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