Acadia National Park, Maine (that's the goal)
We had a lovely evening at Chez VW Dealer last night despite one startling event. At about 10:30 pm, we had a tap on our window and a bright spotlight shined on me when I opened the door. Ned had just climbed on to the upper bunk and was getting settled in for the night. A policeman was inquiring as to our squatter situation. When we gave him our pitiful story and told him we had permission from the dealer, he was quite nice. He introduced himself and said he'd be coming through our area several times that night to keep a watch on things. Yep, all night he drove through, my last count was 3 am. When Coltan inquired as to how our comfort and stay was we told him about the police visit. His response, "We call that housekeeping." Funny guy.
Again we were given a loaner car for the day. (It's the Dealer shuttle van, the driver is off on Wed). Kinda fun to drive all these swanky new model cars. We went out for breakfast at a local's breakfast place, called "Lucky Logger's Landing", again recommended by Coltan. (I wish I could type out Coltan's great clipped New England accent as he talks with us. "Take the cah"). It's rainy and drizzly today so unfortunately not great biking weather. The loaner was much appreciated. Today was Coltan's day off, but he swapped days so he could continue to help us out. Guess who's getting a Bach Cello Sweet sent to him when we get home? Love the pictures we took with him.
This restaurant was great. So uniquely New England. On the menu were such things as mac-n-cheese and "American Chop Suey", a dish specific to Maine. I assumed it was some version of the Chinese chop suey we ate as a kid. Nope, it's basically ground beef, elbow macaroni and some sort of tomato sauce. I stuck with eggs.
We were finally on the road by 12:30. Unbelievable! In 26hrs. an auto part from LA was flown out and installed. I'm so grateful this happened while still in Maine and not in the backroads of French speaking Canada somewhere.
The upside of hanging out with locals for awhile is getting tips on things to see and do. Just a ways up the road we stopped at Len Libby's and saw the world's largest chocolate moose, which was indeed a life size sculpted moose, surrounded by some chocolate bears. Pretty funny actually. I seriously doubt that chocolate tasted very good tho.
A little farther north and the next stop was Cold River Vodka Distillery. They use Maine potatoes to make vodka, blueberry vodka and gin. I think they are the only potato distillery in the U.S. It's a really small operation and we got a personal tour from one of the distillers. The best part of the tour was tasting all the vodka and gin afterwards. My fave was the blueberry vodka - delish! (Yes, Ned drove).
Voted #1 lobster roll in Maine by just about everyone is a place called Red's Eats. It's a small little lobster shack in the town of Wiscasset situated on one of Maine's thousands of inlets. What makes this lobster roll so unique is that it is filled with one glorious pound of lobster meat on a roll. No fillers, no celery, no lettuce, no anything. Just lobster. You can get it with either a side of mayo or butter. We opted for the butter and watched the woman behind the counter pour the butter from the kettle heating on the stove into little cups for us. At the height of tourist season the wait can be well over an hour and the line can go around the block for these lobster rolls. The bright side of it being a rainy day today is that there was only a very short wait and that was at 3:30 in the afternoon! We took our rolls back to the van and had an indoor picnic in the rain stuffing ourselves with lobster.
The rest of the day was spent driving up the coast mostly through drizzle and rain. Not the best picture taking day, but we were glad to be on the road again! We are headed to Acadia National Park anticipating a late arrival. Sure hope the weather clears up a bit so we can bike the carriage roads (and take cool photos) first thing in the morning.
