A Fond Farewell to Maine: Monadnock SP, Jaffrey, NH 10/2/09

We got a couple of sprinkles last night, but woke up to bright blue skies. What a nice gift for our last day in Maine. We exceeded our usual “pokeyness” and really took forever to get down the last stretch of coast. To put this in perspective, it took us about 5 hours to drive 75 miles or so! For the most part we stuck to highway 1, with occasional jaunts down peninsulas and through villages. One of our stops was in search of Walker Point, aka the “Bush Compound” in Kennebunkport. We read in the paper that the ex-Pres was in town and a commemorative anchor was unveiled in front of his place yesterday. We decided to take a peek and sure enough saw the HUGE compound in all its glory, including the anchor with the “wet paint” sign still on. Lots of secret service vehicles around and people milling about their house, but no personal sighting of Mr. or Mrs. George Herbert Walker Bush. We survived. By about 2ish we were starving and finally settled on a seafood restaurant a little more upscale than we’ve been used to dining. In other words we weren’t sitting outside at a picnic table, but were seated inside with silverware! I’m sure gonna miss those crustaceans, tasty little suckers! (See my farewell pic to them). Our overall take on Maine: Northern Maine is more a blue-collar area, Mid-coast has a lot of the B&Bs, shops & villages and the Southern Maine coast has long stretches of sandy beaches. For the first time on the trip we began heading west (yes, I was a little sad, but Ned reassured me that we still have a good 3 weeks on the trip so I felt better), and headed into New Hampshire. We were pleasantly surprised by how absolutely gorgeous this area is. After being near the ocean for the past week it was fun to head back into the mountains. We are camped at a densely wooded campground near the summit of Mount Monadnock. It’s very quaint and reminds me of campgrounds from my childhood. (You know before they paved the campsites. RV’s would not be comfortable here). Thoreau claims this was his favorite hiking area, and I can definitely understand why. We left the sunny skies of the coast and it appears that weather is headed our way. The temperature has dropped considerably so Ned and I are dining on jiffy-pop and hot chocolate in the winniemobile, hunkering down for a cold and stormy night.