We set our alarms again for around 7-7:30 that morning. I woke up without a sore throat but instead a runny nose. Great. I hope we have enough tissue on us. It didn't take as long for everyone to get ready because we had two bathrooms which meant two showers could be used at the same time. I spent my time getting my suitcase all packed up and making sure we didn't leave anything behind. We did use some dishes in our kitchenette, so I loaded up the mini dishwasher with our items and started it.
Once everyone was ready to go, we all hauled our suitcases down the stairs and tetris'd everything back into Amy's Jeep. It was very chilly that morning and I was glad I was bundled up. I also noticed that it was going to be a nice day again in New England. Mom and Mindy went back up just to make sure we got everything and locked the door behind them. I took a picture of the area we were staying at. Sadly, this was the only hotel we stayed at that didn't offer a free breakfast. They did have a restaurant on site, but we didn't really want to eat there. We just wanted to go.
We piled into the Jeep again and drove to the main lobby "pod" and we all got out. Mom checked us out and some of us used the restrooms one more time because we'd be on the road for a couple hours that morning driving east to Maine. I wasn't sure what Mindy had on our itinerary once we got to Maine.
We left Vermont and crossed back into New Hampshire and followed Route 103. We had some discussions on where we should stop for breakfast. Did we want to do a sit-down restaurant, or did we want to grab something through a drive thru? The way we chose didn't really have a lot of large towns with choices to pick from. Because we were on the east coast there were hundreds of thousands of Dunkin Donuts to stop at, so we kept our eyes peeled for one of those. We rolled into Newport, NH, and we finally saw one, so we stopped and went through the drive thru.
Apparently, we chose the lamest Dunkin Donuts to stop at because they were out of a bunch of stuff, they burnt Rhonda's bagel and put cream cheese all over it, when she told them not to, and they forgot to put my donut in the bag. Before we left, we stopped and let Rhonda go inside to grab my donut. She scrapped as much of the cream cheese off of it as she could and ate around the burnt parts. It was our first bad experience at a Dunkin Donuts. At least my donut tasted good, and it was Halloweenie!
We ate our food as we drove to State Route 11 to make our way over to Interstate 89. Once on I-89, we cruised for a while as Mindy told us a little bit about her house, the town she lives in and some of the stuff we would be doing over the next couple days. We got to Manchester, merged onto HN 101 and then I-95 towards the Kittery area. Before we crossed over into Maine, we stopped in the Portsmouth/New Castle area to go visit Fort Constitution Historic Site. Mindy said she enjoyed coming here in the past and wanted to take us since we were in the area.
We arrived and discovered that it was all fenced off with construction and warning signs to not enter, well that sucks. At least I was able to log the virtual cache, C's at Ft. Constitution (Again) (GC794D), plus it was an older one from September 3, 2001. I literally just took a few pictures of the area and one with me in it. We all went back to the Jeep and Mindy steered us to the next place we were going to go explore.
We finally crossed the state line into Maine and got onto the US Route 1. We drove through Kittery and got onto Route 103. I wasn't sure where Mindy was directing us, but I was excited to start seeing sites on the unique Maine coastline. Our first stop in Maine was at Fort McClary. Fort McClary is a former defensive fortification of the US military located along the southern coast at Kittery Point, Maine, at the mouth of the Piscataqua River. It was used throughout the 19th century to protect approaches to the harbor of Portsmouth, NH and the Naval Shipyard. The property and its surviving structures are now owned and operated by the State of Maine as Fort McClary State Historic Site, including a blockhouse dating from 1844.
We parked at the lot down below and walked up to where the blockhouse was. Mom, Rhonda, Mindy and Amy walked over to the other side of the fort, and I walked down to where the coordinates were taking me. It took me a while to zero in on the spot. In fact, I was looking in the wrong spot and eventually was led more over towards the tree line in a pile of rocks. I moved a couple of obvious rocks and there it was, my first Maine geocache! Fort McClary Cache (GC11D9) was another oldie from July 21, 2001. It's crazy that this cache has been here since the summer of my senior year of high school and before the world changed drastically. That part of life sure seems like a distant memory.
We got onto Hwy 1A and followed it north along the coastline up to Cape Neddick. Because it was such a nice day there were a lot of people enjoying the Cape Neddick Lighthouse, we just pulled into the parking lot for. We found a place to park, and I immediately got out to find the traditional cache, Nubble Trouble (GC1YKB1). It was an easy grab, but questioned how long it was going to stay in this spot since it was so vulnerable. I imagine that it went missing frequently. I met up with the girls over by the rocks to get a better view of the lighthouse.
I saw there was another cache, an earthcache, called ME - Cape Neddick Geology (and a lighthouse too!) (GC3VYNW), that one required a little bit more brain power to complete. I took a bunch of pictures and tried to answer them while I was at the location. I'm sure I could figure this out and work on it more when we returned home from our trip. I got what I needed and enjoyed the fact that I was on the Maine coastline enjoying one of the many lighthouses. We took a bunch of pictures and then Mindy said it was time to head to our next location, Kennebunkport.
We got back onto Hwy 1 and drove north and then got onto Route 9 until we saw the Welcome to Kennebunkport sign. From the looks of it, this little harbor town was pretty popular. There were lots of people enjoying their autumn afternoon walking around, shopping and exploring what the town had to offer. We found a place to park up the street and walked down.
I wanted to go into a couple shops before they closed but they wanted to go find some dinner. They walked to the restaurant while I went into a souvenir shop really quick. I wanted to make sure I got into one before they closed for the evening since I didn't know how long dinner was going to last. I got what I needed and called Mom to see which restaurant they went into.
They went into The Boathouse and got seated outside on the dock. I just had water and ordered fish and chips. I was excited to try fish and chips from Maine...since they are well known for their seafood, especially their lobster. I am more of a fish eater rather than shellfish. The waitress brought us our food and I was impressed with how good it looked, even before I ate any of it. That first bite was delicious. I ate everything except for the slaw since I am not a fan and Ben isn't here to eat mine.
We enjoyed the evening and the ambiance of a harbor town, paid our bill and thanked them for a nice meal. We actually had some time to walk around some of the shops, so we did for about an hour or so. I went inside of an expensive sports memorabilia shop for a few minutes and then met up with the girls at a gift shop that also had groceries, medicines, drinks and snacks. I found a cute lobster keychain, a couple postcards and a box of Sudafed hoping that it would take away some of my runny nose symptoms I was suffering from. I was going through Kleenex like crazy!
I went back out to the small-town square and saw there was a traditional cache, Oh the Places You'll Go! (GC8WYGR) and you knew where it was going to be hidden reading the title of the cache. I could also see that this particular hide would be hard to find when town was busier. After looking at several places it could be, I finally found the darn nano cache. I hate these kinds of hides even though I have a nano hide in Yelm. I mostly hate unrolling the log to write my name and then attempting to roll it back up for it to fit back inside the tiny container. I got our name inside and put it back where I found it.
We ended up going back inside the sports memorabilia store and talked to the owner for longer than we should have...he was kind of a creepy guy but has gotten to go to a lot of cool places to get the photos that he had inside the shop. We walked back to the Jeep and made our way to I-95 north. We had about an hour-long drive to get to Mindy's house in Auburn.
We got to her house around 7:00 p.m. The outside of her house was amazing! It literally looked just like a haunted house. It is a Gothic Revival built in 1874, it is called the William A. Robinson House and it is on the National Historic Registry.
We grabbed our luggage out of the Jeep and brought it into the house and kept it on the landing until we knew where we were supposed to take it. First off, every single room was plastered with Halloween decorations. She showed us each of the many rooms downstairs, where the bathrooms were, the pantry, the kitchen, the coffee bar, the basement, all the nooks and crannies before we went up the stairs to the second floor.
She showed us where Mom and I would be sleeping...in her sewing and craft room, with all the Bernie Sanders, lol. She pulled down the tiny ladder to show us her reading nook. We walked down the hall and around the corner is where Rhonda and Amy would be sleeping...with the creepy Halloween dolls inside. She showed us our bathroom, the laundry room, her and her husband's room and the really cool TV room. Seriously, this place had so many rooms!
She took us outside to the shop and "man cave" behind the house. This is a shop of dreams! I would love to have something like this someday. The bottom portion was a workshop/storage room/tools and the upper portion was a wonderful man cave. It had a fireplace, a functional kitchen, TV, games, tables...basically the perfect place to watch the big game or host friends for a game night. I played a couple rounds of PacMan on their arcade game before going back inside the main house.
We turned in around 11 p.m. It was hard to get comfortable on that blow up mattress with a runny nose, but I eventually found the perfect spot and fell asleep.
MA-VT-NH-ME Girl's Trip: Maine Coast, Lighthouses, Geocaching and Shopping (Day 8)
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