Maine, Day 3

After a healthy dose of ibuprofin and a brief nap to let it kick in, I was feeling human once again.

Today was beach day. We drove down to Ogunquit Beach rather than take the Campsite's shuttle van to Footbridge Beach so that we would have a little more freedom and discretion for coming and going. We got to the beach at around 11:45am, which put us exactly between low tide and high tide. We started out close to the water but quickly moved back when we saw that the tide was coming back in quicker than we first anticipated.

The boys didn't spend much time in the water today. I briefly took a walk in up to my knees, but that was enough for me. I thought the water was freezing. I ended up huddling under my umbrella away from evil Mr. Sun and reading my book. We ended up staying until close to 3:30pm, when we decided to pack up our stuff and bring it back to the Explorer. Then we took a walk around town.

At one of the little shops we found a painting from a local artist which depicted a couple sitting on a bench in the moonlight overlooking the ocean on the Marginal Way. Way too eerily, it looked like Maria and I, sitting on "our bench" the night we got engaged here 17 years ago. Needless to say, it was a no-brainer purchase. The artist herself ran the store and sold us the painting, enjoying our story.

After a little bit more of walking around, we stopped at a restaurant for dinner (pizza and pasta). That hit the spot after a pretty long day. We were going to go back to the beach for a walk, but the tide was still too high for us to cross the river, so we decided to leave. We ended up going to the mini-golf place to check out their new "human maze". It was pretty tough. John made it through in 8 minutes, I took 12, and Kevin took 13 (because he cheated by crawling under the walls). Maria watched from the observation deck.

Back to camp, and the boys wanted to go to the pool (where I'm writing this from). On the agenda for the rest of the evening are showers for all of us and then some R & R.

Tomorrow, we have to move our campsite to another one around 40 yards away. What a pain that will be. Hopefully the new site opens up early enough that we can get the move done without cutting too much into our last full day here.

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Maine, Day 2

The warnings about possible thunderstorms for Thursday turned out to be for nothing as it was pretty much a sunny but very hot day, at least the early part of the day.

Kevin was always the second one up in the morning, after Dad.

We went to the outlets in Kittery for a couple of hours and got our shopping done. The outlets were as packed as I've ever seen them, just wall-to-wall cars in the parking lots fighting for parking spaces, and wall-to-wall people in the stores.

By the time we got back to the campground, we all wanted to cool off so we went to the pool for a while. We were the only English speaking there, everybody else was French Canadian. Then back to the campsite for dinner (grilled chicken and salad).

After dinner, I took the boys mini-golfing and for ice cream while Maria stayed behind to straighten up. Then a game of Scrabble and bedtime.

It got pretty cool overnight, and for some reason I developed a splitting headache overnight. Now I'm sitting outside writing this while everybody else is still sleeping, and I cannot find the ibuprofin. Not fun.

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Maine, Day 1

Today we started our annual vacation in Ogunquit, Maine. Unlike last year, the drive up was quick and almost uneventful (see below). We left home shortly after 11:30am and hit no traffic issues at all until we hit the normal slowdown as we hit Ogunquit. Just two stops along the way. One in Massachusetts at a Wendy's for lunch, and one as we reached Oguquit as Kevin needed to poop.

As I mentioned, the trip was almost uneventful. It almost turned quite tragic. As we were driving on the short stretch of I-95 that cuts through New Hampshire, there was an either late 60's / early 70's car that was about to pass us on the left. Just as I saw it in my sideview mirror, I saw a lot of smoke coming from behind the car. I thought it was only exhaust until I heard a metallic sound and then a lot more smoke. Then he started to swerve and lose control. It got worse and worse until he eventually did a 270 degree spinout behind me. I was sure that he was going to roll, but lucky for him he didn't. I think what happened was he had a blowout. I saw through the rearview mirror that he was able to safely get off to the side of the road. Pretty damn scary. If he had been even with us or just ahead of us, he could have taken us out. That would have ruined our day for sure.

Anyway.

We (safely) arrived at the campground at around 3:30pm. After we set up the camper and our campsite, we headed over to the pool to cool off, then back to our site for dinner (steaks and tomato salad). Right now, we're sitting around the campfire and the boys are roasting marshmallows. Scrabble is on the agenda for later.

The forecast for overnight and until mid afternoon tomorrow is calling for a chance of thundershowers. So tomorrow might be our Kittery day at the outlets. The forecast for the rest of the week is for perfect weather.

Stay tuned for another update tomorrow.

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