As I mentioned yesterday, earlier in the summer, my sister and the BIL invited me to stay with them at their summer home in Maine. Given that DG and I had been hoping for a nice getaway for ages, we eagerly took them up on the offer. So, the second week of August was spent mostly in the Mt. Desert area of Maine.
Side note - Mt. Desert is pronounced more like "Mount Dessert" by the locals. Why? Because the area was named by the French, who would have called it something more like "Mont Désert", and there's nothing sexier than Franglais. The more you know.
Maine, being all the way up north of the country, is about a 10+ hour drive from DG's place in Pennsylvania, where we departed. Neither of us was super thrilled about driving all the way in one go, plus we had never seen much of the New England, so we decided to make a stop when we got to the Maine border and camp for one night.
Our place of choice was Wild Duck Campground, aptly named for this little corner of the grounds:
Sadly, the ducks were the only draw of the camp. It was a pretty small campsite, and one we were able to walk the full circuit of in less than 15 minutes. We were admittedly a little disappointed, as we'd been hoping to do a full nature hike. Fortunately, we were only there a short time. The main reason we were there was because the site was in Scarborough, which was a stone's throw from the fine city of Portland, ME.
IMO, calling Portland a city is actually kind of generous. On a whole, it felt very dedicated to tourism, but then again, as a tourist, maybe that's the only part of it that I got to see. Normally, I eschew doing touristy things, but DG and I were feeling a little self-indulgent.
Our first stop in the city was a recommendation by DG's coworker, a little place called The Holy Donut, which was kind of a hipster's Dunkin' Donuts (no, I'm not going to apologize for that.)
Not that either of us minded - the donuts were delicious.
That, good readers, is a maple bacon donut (and to its left, its lesser cousin, the gluten-free maple donut). This probably doesn't mean a lick to anyone else, but I'd been craving a maple bacon donut for months before our trip, unable to find one anywhere. I wasn't expecting it here, either, but lo' and behold, in all its glory:
After a few hours, though, we'd found that we'd exhausted most of what we wanted to do, so it was off to Freeport to see the L.L. Bean 24/7 flagship store. Of course, because DG and I are dummies, neither of us took any pictures of either L.L. Bean (which was massive, by the way) or Freeport. In a lot of ways, I actually found Freeport to be a lot more charming - still the same kitsch tourist shops, but laid out in kind of a old town main street way. I recommend seeing both towns, if you are ever up that way - they're only about a half hour to an hour's driving from one another.
A few short hours later, though evening was coming upon us, and we still had about 3 hours to drive until we got to my BIL's. Back on the open road:
It might have been a long trip, but the drive up wasn't so bad. Maine by car is gorgeous:
Even so, we were quite happy to be out of the car by the time 9 PM rolled around. Humans were not meant to sit in cars for so long @__@
Tomorrow: The World's Manliest Man, and The Least Rugged Lady
Until the next
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