Into Maine
Dispatch V
Fellow Vagabonds!
We picked up our rental car just outside Dartmouth in New Hampshire and made it into Boston in four hours time. As we entered I remembered the tangle of spaghetti Bostonians call roads and highways. Such a joy. Nevertheless, Siri guided us to our AirBnb and we spent the next couple of days with Molly and Ben, just hanging out, catching up.
Molly was ahead of the “big resignation” curve, and after five years at Microsoft decided to depart her job there to pursue her art and graphic arts career. Business is booming and her artwork, cards, stickers and booklets are selling briskly. She’s having fun. Check out her work and website at https://www.mollywalter.com.
After three far too short days, Molly dropped us at Boston’s North Station and we caught the Downeaster to Portland, Maine where we would begin to head north to Acadia National Park, then Nova Scotia, and finally Newfoundland, home to a part of the world even Canadians consider wild.
But first we settled on the train as our conductor called for tickets. “Tickets! Tickets, please.” Calmly, he walked the aisle. Of course there are not tickets anymore, just phones with your downloaded app. Conductors are interesting characters. Nothing like flight attendants. Some are calm, almost grandfatherly, some are insistent to the point of annoyance and some are simply business-like. But all are in command, determined to ensure you get from wherever you were to wherever you want to be. Accents may differ depending, but clarity above all is paramount. “Two minutes to Dovah (Dover), Dovah, New Hampshah! Dovah next stop!” Three times the stop is called out, every time. Dover, Exeter, Durham, Wells … And then a kindly, “Watch your step.” And that’s what we did when we heard the call for Portland. We could have taken the end of the line to Brunswick, but in COVID world, Portland was the only place we could find a car available to drive way up into what Canadians call “the Maritime Provinces.”
Once in our car, we found our hotel near downtown and immediately did two things. Took a deep breath and asked the proprietor if we could stay an extra day. One night trips get tough when you’re looking at traveling all the time without a return home any time soon. Wherever you arrive, you have to unpack, catch up on work, family and friends, handle finances and all of the other business of the day. And then, because each day is new, you need to spend some time getting the lay of the land, find a place or two to eat, sleep, get up, repack and then hit the road. Not that we were in any way prepared to give up; we are, if nothing else, intrepid, insistent, dogged, stubborn, stupid (?), but truthfully, we were beginning to unravel just a bit and needed to rejigger.
We decided we would spend one day doing pretty much that. Siri found us a pharmacy where we attempted to learn where we could get the special PCR COVID test Canada required. No help there, but eventually, after a lot of trips to pharmacies and mad searching of the Internet, we figured out exactly what was required to swab our nasal passages and enter Canada.
Next we sat down to pay our bills, and assess how to better plot our future trips. Then we headed to the mall; Apple’s only store in all of Maine. I was having iPad issues. On the way in, Cyn and I overheard a young woman on her phone say, “But what I don’t understand is why would anyone hire someone at Victoria’s Secret who doesn’t know her own bra size!” At a Portland post office we picked up a Priority Mail box into which we stuffed unnecessary clothes to jettison so that our packing didn’t require an algorithm to figure out how to sensibly unpack and repack all of our belongings every time we moved.
If we were struggling in Portland, I wondered how we hoped to handle legs of our journey when we might get sick, need to pay bills or do laundry in Mumbai or Kathmandu or on the banks of the Orinoco River, places where we didn’t even understand the language? Were we going to the Orinoco River? Where is the Orinoco River? I didn’t know.
Toward the end of our first full day, Cyn admitted she was hungry and feeling cranky. This is rare so I paid attention. I can’t recall what I said about something we needed to get or do but at one point she flopped down on the bed, lifted her feet and said, “Oh, smell my piggies!” I fell over laughing, and so did she, and that phrase has now become our watch word any time things seem to be slipping sideways. That, and accepting, and adapting, and cracking on.
Smell my piggies!
We did explore Portland, walking along Congress St - the city’s main drag, and wandering down to Hobson’s Wharf where a friend had suggested we stop by Becky’s Diner for the best lobster rolls ever. They were good, even if it was our first tasting. Kind of like a hot dog except with a big chunk of lobster wedged in the bun with a dollop of mayo. Is there really any food that doesn’t taste good if a lobster is involved?
Maine’s Best Lobster Roll?
Portland, in case it isn’t obvious, is a port city. About 60,000 souls, feeling the crunch of COVID. The harbor was developed with some big hotels, but a lot of restaurants were closed. Becky’s was booming, though. We walked past a large sculpture of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and I discovered he is the city’s most famous resident, born February 27, 1807. He grew up in what is the oldest building on the Portland peninsula, the first historic site in Maine (although when the house was built in the 1784s, Portland was known as Falmouth and Maine was still part of Massachusetts. Maine didn’t become a state until 1820). In his day, Longfellow was one of the fireside poets from New England, and the best known American poet of his time. His best known works include “Paul Revere’s Ride,” “The Song of Hiawatha” anD “Evangaline.” When his second wife died tragically, after catching fire in her own clothing, Longfellow struggled to write poetry so decided to translate Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, all three volumes. Unlike most poets, he died wealthy, at age 75.
Portland’s most famous resident - Henry Wadsworth Longefellow photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron in 1868. (Photo Unknown)
By the time we departed Portland, we had gotten word from Kim at Frontiers Travel (our embattled travel agent; www.frontierstravel.com ) that nearly every hotel, motel and B&B north of where we stood was booked solid. It was peak foliage season and we were hoping to go into Acadia National Park around Bar Harbor, the state’s #1 tourist attraction.
Kim called. “I couldn’t find you a place at Schitt’s Creek right now things are so booked!” she laughed. Finally, she did find a few, but nothing in Rockland, on the coast, where we hoped to stay that night. The nearest place she could find was about an hour inland, a town called Waterville. It was in the middle of nowhere, but still in Maine. We decided to visit a restaurant Molly had suggested called Cook’s Lobster and Ale House at the tip of Orr’s Island, a beautiful little slip of land that sticks its tongue out into the Atlantic like a bratty kid. We dined on an excellent seafood medley, watched a tall ship gliding into the small harbor and decided, as the sun grew low on the horizon, to visit Rockland anyway before heading inland to Waterville.
That was a mistake.
A single, small tall ship glides into Orr’s Island (Photo Chip Walter)
Why? Because when you are in the northern hemisphere and the earth swings around the sun in autumn, the planet tilts away from the sun and not into it. Each day, as Earth revolves winterside, sunlight recedes a little more. And what did that mean for your intrepid explorers who now found themselves winding their way inland to Waterville? Darkness! Black and impenetrable. Stephen King style darkness, the sort that raises the hackles on the back of your neck as your headlights search only a few yards ahead, past ramshackle barns and dimly lit farmhouses; the sorts of places where Annie Wilkes might live and wreak havoc, or maybe Michael Myers, ax in hand. We imagined blowing out a tire and then facing Dr. Frank-N-Furter.
This forested part of Maine sucks light like a black hole. There are no Interstates, only the empty winding roads that Siri guided us through without a note of sympathy or insight. Maybe sorcerers had bewitched our GPS and were sending us to certain, unutterable death. We were sure of it when our tuneless navigator demanded we turn left onto Old County Road. Cyndy and I looked at one another. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
Surely that was the perfect place to die! When I looked left into this gloom, it was as if a black wall had been erected. No sign of road nor ground. We could be driving off a cliff! For half an hour we didn’t see another soul, living or dead!
The view just before we made the turn to drive down Old County Road. (Photo Chip Walter)
Eventually we found signs of life, when we turned onto Maine Route 3, and saw a mini-mart and handful of cars. We actually waved when they went by.
The next morning we drove back to Rockland by day. A much warmer and inviting place.
I’ll leave you there for now with this great song by Enya (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=654tlKKI_Ys).
More to come as we head ever farther North where new adventures (and misadventures) await.
Meanwhile …
Crack on!
C-squared
This is a series about Cyndy and Chip’s Vagabond Adventure - our journey to explore all seven continents, all seven seas and 100+ countries without traveling by jet. COVID has forced us to begin the United States, not a bad start. What will the world be like following a global pandemic? What people will we meet? What cultures, places, languages and music will broaden us? We’ll find out. We hope you’ll come along and see what we learn with us …