BACKGROUND STORY: So randomly, Nikki and I decided we wanted to go on a road trip during my week off in August. Originally we were going to head out west to Yellowstone National Park (yes, with Violet), but thankfully our mom talked us out of it, saying there's no way we'd be able to experience all millions of acres of the park in 3 days. So we scratched that idea. Then we were thinking, "hey, Colorado sounds neat", so we looked into going there. We decided driving 20 hours with an 8 month old would drive us literally insane, so a few ideas thrown back and forth later, we decided on Maine. We had both never been there so it seemed like the best (and closest) place.
P.S. If you're my Facebook friend or follow me on Instagram, you probably saw a few of mine and Nikki's photos from the trip. If you're not, just search the hashtag #TwoGirlsAndABabyGoToMaine and you'll find all of our pictures!
DAY 1: Sunday, August 16
Our planned ETD (estimated time of departure) (is that a real abbreviation?) was 12pm. Nikki was coming back from a wedding in Houghton Lake (about 3 hours away) Sunday morning and kept telling me she was 2 hours further than she really was (not funny, Nik). The car was packed to capacity. Seriously. There was barely room for Violet.
After a few arguments, we finally peaced out of Goodrich at 12:17pm. We were headed to Niagara Falls the first night since I had never been there and because it was only about 4-5 hours away from our house, so it made for a short(ish) day. We were crossing through Canada because it cut 3 hours out of our trip. You know how when you go through a country, you need passport or an enhanced license? Well, Nikki and I had those. Violet obviously did not. All we had was her birth certificate. We couldn't really find a clear answer on if that would work or not. Some websites said that she needed a passport, while others said that her birth certificate was fine. It's not like you can just call up the people at the border and ask, so we were just banking on her birth certificate working. We were pretty confident that we would be able to get into Canada. We really had no back-up plan on if we weren't able to get back into the U.S., so now that I'm thinking about it, we were stupid.
We made it to the Ontario-New York border around 4:30pm. It wasn't until an hour and a half later that we finally made it up to the border people (I have no idea what they're really called). This was the moment of truth on seeing if we would be able to get back into good ol U S of A. When we finally reached the booth, it took maybe 2 minutes to cross, which is the fastest I've ever crossed. The guy looked at our things, looked at Violet, and basically said, "Welcome to America, bye". So if you're wondering if your 8 month old child can cross the border with only a birth certificate, the answer is yes.
The campground we were staying at was about 15 minutes from Niagara Falls. It was still light out when we got there to check in, so we decided to set up camp before we headed off. We used Matt's tent, which can literally hold 10 people. It was like a mansion. Much bigger than my little 2 person tent. Matt and my parents told us that it would take years to set it up, because we didn't set it up beforehand so we didn't know what we were doing. We were champs though and set it up fairly quickly.
We had a 10 hour drive the next day to get to our destination in Maine, so we went to bed, because we're party animals.
Day 2: Monday, August 17
So we woke up at literally the crack of dawn. Actually, it was like 6:30am, but crack of dawn sounds cooler. We packed everything up and were surprisingly on the road by 7am, which if you know Nikki and I, you know that that is way too early and we do not function at that hour of the day. We headed out east to our campground, Lamoine State Park, which was right outside of Acadia National Park in Maine.
We drove literally the entire day. Not joking. So really nothing happened on Monday, besides the fact that we spent probably around $70 on the turnpike at the tolls. Not joking about that one either. Although during one of our food stops (we had many), we did hear two men conversing about how terrible gluten is for you and how they both had completely given it up all together, so they were both obviously very healthy... *Eye roll*
We made a pit stop at some random city in Maine to say hi/bye to Nikki's BFF, Emily. She was working at a summer camp in Maine and is actually headed to Australia for a year, so Nik and I said our hi's and bye's.
Our permit said that we needed to get to the campground by 9pm to check in. We made it there by 8:45pm (we're terrible with timing), but hey, we made it before 9pm. Apparently the 9pm on the permit was just decoration though, because the office was already closed by the time we got there. Nikki and I were extremely exhausted by this time and it had just started raining, so not being able to check in was icing on the cake. We looked and our permit did have our campsite number, so we drove around looking for it. After abut 15 minutes of driving around and looking like creeps, we finally found it. We both sat in the car for another 10 minutes, pretending that we didn't have to set up the tent in the rain. Now, I'm not sure exactly how the next couple minutes panned out, but it ended up with us calling our mom, asking if we could stay in a hotel. Yes, you read that right. Two grown adults.. Called our mom.. To ask permission to stay in a hotel.
After she reminded us of our age and granted us her permission, we called around to bed and breakfasts that were close to where we were. We called one, Acadia Sunrise Motel, and they said that not even 5 minutes before we called, someone had cancelled their reservation, so they had one room available. We told them we would call them back in case we found one closer to us. We didn't end up finding one, so we called Roy (the nice man at the front desk) at the motel and told him we would take the room.
So we drove 15ish minutes from the state park to the motel and checked in. When Nikki went in to pay, she said that Roy had two families come in after we had called the first time (when we hadn't confirmed that we'd take the room) asking if they had any rooms available. But Roy being the nice guy that he is, told them that the motel was booked. So it's because of Roy that we didn't have to stay in the rain!!
I didn't take pictures of our room at the motel because we were so exhausted. We both took nice hot showers and slept in real beds. I'm pretty sure we were both in bed and asleep by 10pm. So that was Monday.
DAY 3: Tuesday, August 18
Our plan for the day was to hit up Acadia National Park and explore, so we woke up early and were out of the room by 9am. We were obviously starving, so we looked up local breakfast diners. We found some super random one called Martha's Diner. It got really good reviews on TripAdvisor, so we decided to go for it. It took 7 minutes from the time the waitress set down our food to the time we finished our meal. Seriously. That's not a joke. Literally 7 minutes. It was a combination of we were both starving and the food was that amazing. The waitress even made a comment on how fast we ate our food. Pretty embarrassing, but whatever. No shame.
After we inhaled breakfast, we set out for our next campground. We could check in at 12pm, so our thought was to go set up our tent that was soaked from dew from Sunday night and then go play in the park. We found a beach area/natural seawall on our way, so we stopped there for awhile and had a mini photo shoot.
We got to the restaurant around 2pm (after we had driven around for an hour looking for somewhere to eat.. We're not pathetic, I swear). We got seated and the waitress was super nice. Nikki and I both ordered our food - lobster stew and a BLT with avocado - and a beer from the local brewery. It wasn't until seriously an hour and a half later that we got our lobster stew and we still hadn't gotten our drinks yet. Then it was another half hour until we got our sandwiches, which were cold. Pretty simple and cheap meal, right? Wrong. It cost us $60 for that meal. $60!!!!!!!!! We found out just as we were leaving that our waitress was the only one scheduled to work and she had 10 tables to wait on by herself. We felt terrible for her, but were still pretty ticked about how expensive it was.
Finally at 4:30-5pm, we set out and could actually explore Acadia National Park. The park isn't very big, especially compared to like Yellowstone or Grand Tetons National Park, but it was still pretty big. We first set out to Cadillac Mountain, which is the main attraction of the park. The drive up wasn't too bad, meaning we weren't driving on the edge of cliffs or anything. The view from the top was absolutely amazing. You could see everything. So we hiked around and obviously had another photo shoot.
The next day we woke up at 4:30am. Not joking. Nikki's friend Emily had told us how if we watch the sunrise at Cadillac Mountain (inside Acadia), we would be the first people in the U.S. to see the sunrise. So obviously we had to do it. Surprisingly, we actually woke up at 4:30am on Wednesday. I honestly didn't think we would. But so we peaced out and headed back towards Acadia. We got to Cadillac Mountain around 5:15am, and the sunrise was scheduled for 5:42am, according to The Weather Channel. There were seriously at least 200 people there already when we got there, so parking was extremely limited. We actually had to climb UP the mountain and engage in physical activity that early in the morning. Barf. After hiking around for about 20 minutes, we finally found a good spot to see the sunrise.
When it was like 5:41am, the whole sky was already lit up, so we thought that that was it. I mean, everything looked cool, but it wasn't epic or anything. THEN! The sun finally peaked through the clouds and starting rising. It was honestly one of the coolest things I've ever seen. I took some pictures, but they don't do it justice.
Well, Violet wasn't tired so that meant we couldn't be tired. She decided that crawling around on our faces would be a lot more fun. It wasn't.
We ordered some adult beverages because #VACATION and ate 3 baskets of chips and salsa. The poor waiter kept having to refill the chips (sorry, guy). Our delicious food came soon after and we ate that very quickly because we have no manners and don't know how to not eat food at lightning speed. After we were in food coma, we relaxed at the restaurant for a bit before heading on to the next store.
I had a beer flight and Nik had a wine flight. I can't remember all that was on the beer flight, except that there was this terrible IPA and I couldn't even finish a 1 oz. pour because it was so IPA-y. Seriously, how do people like those? Nikki got a wine flight, even though she's a beer person. She likes to pretend she's a wine person, I guess. I don't think she liked any of the wines, except for this blueberry wine. Fun fact: blueberries are a really big thing in Maine. We had no idea. This blueberry wine was just to die for. So, so, so good. So good that Nikki bought 3 bottles of it.
Two flights, 3 6-packs, 3 bottles of wine, a couple t-shirts, a pint glass later, and a lot of money later, we finally left. We had explored pretty much the entire town/city by 2pm, so we decided to head to our next campground near Augusta, ME and just have a relaxing night of hanging out.
We got to the campground, Lake St. George State Park, around 4pm. I was still exhausted from that morning, so after camp was all set up, I took a nice little nap. Nikki and Violet hung out in the tent with me, and Violet was crawling all over me again, but I was so tired that I didn't even notice. For the remainder of the night, we just stayed at the campground. We had been so busy the previous couple of days, so it was nice to just hang out and not do anything. I can't remember exactly what went down the rest of the night, but we went to bed around 9pm again because we're old and lame.
DAY 5: Thursday, August 20
Thursday morning we slept in (kind of). I think we woke up around 8am. We were staying at the same campground 2 nights in a row, so thankfully, we didn't have to pack anything up before we headed out on our adventure for the day. We were going to Portland, ME, which was about an hour and a half from us, to spend the day. Jason's mom and a friend of mine had both highly recommended going to Portland and had said it was super cool. And it totally was. The city itself was extremely clean and just very nice. We had no idea what we were going to do in the city, so we were total tourists and headed to the Visitor Center of the city. I went inside and grabbed literally every brochure and map that I could find. 40 brochures may have been a little excessive, but oh well. One of the maps had a little "Tour Portland Yourself" list of things to do, so we decided to do our best to hit everything on that list.
First on the list was the Portland Observatory (I think that's the official name). You have to go on a tour to get to the top of the observatory, so when we walked inside, we asked when the next one was. The lady said that one had just started, so she said to skip the payment until after the tour and to run and join the one going on. I wasn't really paying attention to everything that the tour guide was saying, but I did hear that the observatory was over 200 years old and made completely out of wood. It was also one of the oldest buildings still standing in Portland. I may be making that last fact up, but you'll never know unless you go to the observatory. After about 15 minutes of the tour guide spewing facts and telling us stories about the tower, we finally got to the top. Unfortunately though, she had taken too long to tell us everything and fog had rolled in and covered the whole city. The tour guide said that on a clear day, you can see Mount Washington, which is the highest point in New Hampshire and about 90 miles from Portland. We couldn't even see a mile out from the tower, so we were pretty ticked. Had the weather been clear, I'm sure the view would have been spectacular. After we snapped a few pictures of the fog, we headed back down to pay and be on our merry way to finish the list o' Portland. The lady at the front asked us how everything was and we told her it was foggy and that we couldn't really see anything from the top. She felt so bad that she gave us a 50% discount. What an awesome woman. We then asked her cool things to do in the city and she gave us a bunch of recommendations, so we went on to do those.
By the time we were done in the mansion, it was lunch time, so obviously we had to find food. We found this little shack right on the ocean that apparently had the best lobster roll in Maine, so we decided to check it out. Nikki needed to try one more lobster roll before we left Maine. When we first pulled into the parking lot, I was "yelled" at/flipped off/angrily gestured at by some random old woman who was claiming that the parking lot was a one way. Which it was, I'll give her that. But it was the opposite way that she was going. So we silently yelled at her back because she was being ridiculous. There was a really long line so Nikki went and stood in line to order while I went and found a table. The tables were all outside literally right on the shore of the ocean. I found this really nice table and sat down with Violet. Then some woman came out of nowhere and was mad that I "took her table". Uh, no ma'am, you're wrong. There was no one sitting there. Crazy old ladies are all over Maine. Sheesh.
My mom had made a huge deal about the fact that we hadn't had a real lobster dinner since we had been there. You know, the kind where you pick out the innocent little lobster that you're going to boil and chomp on. We were going to order one at the shack, but decided to stick with the lobster roll and let me tell you, I do not regret eating that lobster roll. Honestly one of the best things I have ever eaten in my life. After self-induced food coma (is that a real thing?), we discussed how we were likely to gain 70 pounds after the trip and then moved to the next hot spot.
We decided to be cultural and headed to the Portland Museum of Art after. That museum was actually interesting. I took pictures of some of my favorite art pieces, but I'm not sure if it's legal to post those on here, so I won't. I can paint you a picture of the picture of the painting if you're into that, but otherwise sorry, don't hate me.
After the museum, we were pretty exhausted, but decided to hit up a local brewery before we headed back to the campground. We stopped by Rising Tide Brewing Company and I'm so glad we did. I'm no beer connoisseur by any means, but this place had some freaking delicious beer. Nikki and I both got flights again and drank them pretty fast. After we bought our souvenirs (because we're complete tourists), we headed back to the car to leave. But then we saw a taco truck right next to the brewery. So we obviously had to stop there first. Again, so glad we did because it was honestly the best taco I have ever had in my entire life. Not even exaggerating.
DAY 6: Friday, August 21
We woke up at 5am on Friday and were surprisingly on the road by 6am. We were headed to Pymatuning State Park in Pennsylvania, which was 12 hours from our campground in Maine. We literally spent the entire day driving through upstate Pennsylvania, which was actually a lot prettier than I expected (no offense, Pennsylvania). We stopped in Scranton, PA for lunch because, well, it's Scranton. But other than that, we did absolutely nothing of importance on Friday. We got to the campground, set up camp, and went to bed early. Again. Sorry to bore you.
DAY 7: Saturday, August 22
We "slept in" on Saturday and woke up around 8am. We had plans to visit Nikki's friend, Leah, from Alaska, who was visiting her hometown of Kent, OH, which was about an hour from our campground. It was Leah's daughter's first birthday, so we helped celebrate!!!! We got to her house in Kent and said our hellos, then headed "downtown", where there was a dog festival going on. Not like the scary dog festival where they do terrible things to dogs, but like the happy dog festival where they celebrate and do fun things for dogs. There were dogs all over the place. It was probably one of the best days of my entire life, not going to lie to you.
After we said hello/goodbye to Nikki's Alaskan friends, we finally headed home towards Goodrich. We only had a 4 hour drive left, which honestly felt like nothing at that point. We made it home to Goodrich around 6pm and celebrated our homecoming by going out to Cranberries Cafe for dinner with the cutie parents. After dinner, we attempted to unpack everything, since I had to drive 9 more hours the next day to head back to Houghton (terrible planning mistake on my part). But we managed to do it and everything was golden.
Overall, Maine was absolutely beautiful. I can't wait to go back and stay for more than 3 days. If you're thinking about taking a vacation out east, you should definitely go to Maine. The views were amazing and the food was delicious. At least I think it was. I usually inhaled anything that was set in front of me.
Sorry this post literally took 3 weeks to do. I've been absolutely swamped with school and work and my social life (HA that last one's a joke). Like all of my other posts, I didn't proofread this at all, so if anything sounds stupid, I'm sorry.