States & Provinces visited on this segment: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont
Dates: Thursday, July 26 to Sunday, July 29
Miles driven: 859 (7711 total to date)
Summary: After leaving the hospital in Calais we headed down to Bar Harbor. When we got there it was close to dark, but we were thankful to be able to get into the campground at a more reasonable time and to start getting back on a normal schedule. We spent the next two nights at a nice campground that was right on the water on Mt. Desert Island. On Friday we went into the town of Bar Harbor, and explored Acadia National Park. We drove up to the highest point on the island (Cadillac Mountain), and the kids went swimming at Sand Beach on the SE side of the island. Supposedly this is the only sandy beach on the island, but even it was not very sandy. On Saturday we left Acadia and headed SW across Maine. We stopped to see some sights in “the other” Portland, including the Portland Head Lighthouse which is south of Portland. We then continued across the rest of Maine and into New Hampshire. We spent the next two nights in a campground in Chichester, just east of Concord.
On Sunday we headed off for a day trip to explore New Hampshire and Vermont. We ended up spending most of the day in Vermont, but drove through some picturesque small towns in New Hampshire. In Vermont we went to the Calvin Coolidge State Park in Plymouth Notch. The state has purchased and restored most of the buildings in this very small town where President Coolidge was born and grew up in. There is a museum with displays on Coolidge’s life, and most of the buildings in town are open to visit including the house he was born in, the general store his father ran, and the church that the family attended. After leaving Plymouth Notch, we headed north. We went to Stowe, and stopped at the Trapp Family Lodge. Karen is a huge fan of the movie The Sound of Music, and Stowe is where the family settled after they fled Austria before World War II. The family opened up a lodge which has turned into a large resort. The youngest son of the captain and Maria still runs the lodge. We ate dinner in Stowe, and then stopped in Waterbury for a tour of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream factory, getting some ice cream for dessert. We found out that every Ben & Jerry’s employee gets 3 free pints of ice cream for every day they work. I like ice cream, but think I would either get tired of eating it or get very fat if I worked there! Guess I should keep my job at Intel. After leaving Ben and Jerry’s we headed back to our camp in southern New Hampshire for the night.
Here is a poem Elizabeth wrote while in Acadia National Park:
The waves crash on the land.
My feet can feel the sand.
The rocky cliffs so high.
Oh my! Oh my!
It’s beautiful to see.
It seems to call to me.
Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/bryan.vacation/Part13MaineNewHampshireVermont
Other notes: While hiking back down from the summit of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park, a woman going up said to Elizabeth, “Is your name Elizabeth?” After Elizabeth said yes, she said that we had been neighbors at another campground. It turns out this was a couple from Alabama that had camped next to us 10 days before in Ottawa. While we had left Ottawa and headed to Québec City and the Maritime Provinces before entering Maine they had went to Montreal and then through Vermont and New Hampshire. Our paths met again in Acadia National Park. The woman said she had recognized “Elizabeth’s beautiful hair”. It’s a small world.
Next up: Massachusetts
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