Life and such: Driving Day

It was a driving day yesterday - a short one, but still a driving day.

The Econolodge I stayed in must have once been something else, more upscale and classier. Lots of dark wood around. The desk clerk didn't have any idea what it had been. No surprise really. I know my sense of history is shaky at best. Still, glad that my GPS found it!

Got on the road around 10:30 again. A seemingly comfortable time for me to be up and at it. My GPS doesn't seem to have a feature of being able to look at the entire route at one time - like on Google Maps. Oh well. I clicked through a few turns and saw that it was indeed taking me cross country and not down to the super highways and back up. Phew! I like it when I don't have to fight with my GPS.

The drive was slow and pretty. Most of the time the speed limit was 50 miles per hour. This is great for gas mileage. And since I was in no tearing hurry, it didn't matter. I was hoping that I would stumble upon something especially interesting to me along the route - like a surprise brewpub or the like, but it didn't happen. The scenery, of which I took no driving pictures, was gorgeous throughout the whole trip. I drove through the middle of both Vermont and New Hampshire. And drove across a good bit of Maine as well. Little or no traffic and not too frequently was I trapped behind excruciatingly slow vehicles. Yay!

I got to Belfast a little earlier than I had thought so I decided to stop and buy some sunflower seeds (I was running perilously low) and then decided a "final moment of freedom" beer was called for. I was going to go to Three Tides, but they didn't open until 4. So I went to the Lookout Bar instead. I like that place. It was pretty much deserted when I got there. Had a nice long chat with the bartender. And met two nice people - one from Buffalo and one from DC. Couldn't figure out their relationship. I gave them all cards. Lucky them.

After finishing my tasty Casco Bay red ale from Maine - they have 11 taps of Maine beer there - I headed on down the road to Juliet and Paul's house. Vacation was basically over. Oh well - I knew it would be. Apparently Mom and Juliet have been having a good time. That is a good thing. Mom continues to surprise me with what she remembers and what she doesn't. I try not to give too much away when bringing up a past event to see if she actually remembers or whether she is just nodding and saying she remembers. Hard to tell sometimes.

It is cold and wet here in Maine just now, so there was a fire going in the fireplace. Yay! We sat around and caught up a bit. Mom and Juliet had gone shopping at the T-Shirt store - Liberty Graphics - and had shirts for everyone (relatively). I like my rooster shirt a lot! Eventually we headed to Chez Michel for dinner. It was my first visit and it was a good one. We had a very pleasant server who is getting married soon. She and Juliet talked about teaching since they both have grade school teaching in common. We all ate good food - I think that mom and I both ate too much. She had Haddock Oscar with lobster instead of the normal crab. Juliet and Paul had Blackened Haddock on spinach. I had Duck au Poivre. Mine meal was very tasty. We even had dessert. Mom and I tried to finish a piece of Death by Chocolate - we did good damage but didn't manage to completely make it disappear. Oh, I had a porter from Andy's brewery - a Maine brewer. Something was dreadfully wrong with it so I sent it back. Ick. No one there knew anything about beer and thought it was just fine. Blech. I ordered a pale ale in its place and that wasn't bad. Yippee!

Driving home, we realized that the tide was very high. Juliet and I walked down to see just how far it had come up - pretty darn far!

We all ran for a beds and called it a day. Yay sleep!