After we finished work on Thursday, September 23rd, Ben and I threw our bags into the car and set off for the border. Our flight to Portland, Maine, would depart from Seattle at 5:55am the next day, so we crossed the border the night before and stayed at Brian and Sue's home. It was great to catch up with them, meet their baby daughter Kendra, and laugh at their crazy dog, Eli!
On Friday we got up at 3:30am, flew Seattle-Detroit-Portland, and arrived in Portland around 4pm. David and Raquela were scheduled to arrive in Portland by train 10 minutes later. After picking up our rental car from the airport (a new silver Chrysler Sebring), we discovered that Tommy (our GPS) was having an off day, so we found our way to the train station the old-fashioned way instead (i.e. by stopping twice to ask for directions). Then, with David and Kela and their luggage installed, we set off on the 3 hour drive to Bar Harbor, Maine - GPS still not working and fingers crossed that we were heading in the right direction.
Three hours and a fast-food-and-grocery-stop later, we arrived in Bar Harbor after dark, Tommy having joined us again partway through the drive. We spent the night in this cute little cottage...
On Saturday morning we set off to explore Acadia National Park, which was practically on our doorstep, before starting the 7.5-hour drive to Prince Edward Island (the first Canadian stop on our trip). Apart from the minor annoyance of getting onto the Acadia Loop Road in the wrong direction - which meant we couldn't go all the way around as we eventually came to a one-way section and spent a while driving up and down the same road before we figured out what was going on (actually, this was more funny than annoying, especially since I then noticed that I had been staring straight through the big red "ONE WAY" on the map for the last hour) - it was a really nice morning.
The view from Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park...
A cute road sign and lobster traps on a roof in the little town of Otter Creek, which is surrounded by (but not part of) the national park...
Thunder Hole, a spot where the water rushes in and makes a thunder-like sound at a particular tide level (which our visit did not coincide with)...
Other sights...
After we left the national park, we spent an hour wandering around Bar Harbor and enjoying some lunch. Bar Harbor was a very cute, colourful and touristy town, with a picturesque marina at the end of the main street. We bought a cute onesie for our nephew and ate a seafood pizza before hitting the road again on our drive north to Canada.
On our way back to the mainland (Bar Harbor is on an island that is connected to mainland Maine by a bridge), we stopped to pose for some photos at these terrific adjacent roads we had noticed the previous evening...
Then, it was north to Prince Edward Island!
