The Great Adventure - Day 3 - August 7, 2009

For a couple of years when I was young (around five or six) my family would vacation with another family, the Drinkwines, that lived near us in Ticonderoga, New York. My Dad worked with Mr. Drinkwine and my Mom and Mrs. Drinkwine were good friends. We would rent a couple of beach cabins for a week or two, the first couple of years in York, Maine. Later, when my family moved to Brazil we still managed to get back to York once or twice; one year we regrouped in Digby, Nova Scotia, and after that I think things died out.

The Drinkwines had four kids. They were quite a bit older than we were (early teens, but they seemed so much older), so I wasn't all that close to them personally. I don't really remember hanging out with them, but what I do remember, and what helps me date when it was all going on, was the music they listened too. The seventies were in full swing and looking back I remember they were kinda hippie wanna-bes. They all had the long stringy hair (the boys too) and they said things like "groovy" a lot. They always had a radio on, so I best remember those summers through the songs that were always playing: "Seasons in the Sun" by Terry Jacks, "Billy, Don't Be a Hero" by Paper Lace and "Sing" by the Carpenters. I remember the Digby summer especially because it was while we were there that Elvis Presley died. Living in Brazil we Perkins kids were rather isolated from American pop culture, so we had a hard time understanding why the Drinkwine kids were crying all the time. Thirty-five years later with the next installment of the Perkins clan due to head north I talked Stacy into letting me take a sentimental journey and drive up the Maine coast through York. She was more than willing to humor me.

We had said our goodbyes to Valerie the night before. Although their family was going on vacation that afternoon, she still had to put in a full day of work, so she left long before we got up. But Jack greeted us with pancakes that made the kids quite happy. We got our flight plan blessed by Jack and hit the road for an early start. Our end goal was to get to my folks house in northern Maine early that evening. Given no major setbacks, we thought we could make a quick detour through York and be at Mimi and Grampy's for dinner.

Before noon we had added Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire to our collection of states. (We'd secured Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut the first day.) Some things about the road trip have definitely changed since my childhood. The kids didn't flop lazily among the suitcases in the back of the station wagon (the "back-back" as we lovingly referred to it) or ride shotgun, but rather were 5-point-harness confined in car seats in the back seat in all its bland security. (We tried an additional cocooning layer of duct tape for added benefit, but found it was too hard to get them out to go potty every 30 miles.) The kids were still too young to write up or appreciate a good "Maine or Bust" sign taped to the back window (or the occasional surreptitious "Help! Being kidnapped! Call the state trooper!" sign). But I'm sure that day will come.

We placed a celebratory phone call to Mimi and Grampy from the road shortly after crossing the iconic Piscataqua River bridge into Maine. L and N got to deliver the big news: "We're in MAINE!" Traffic had been heavy but flowing, so we still expected to make it there by dinner. Shortly after crossing the state line we took our I-95 exit to hit old Route 1. Maine is known for its rocky granite coastline. The southern coast of Maine around York and Ogunquit has some of the very few sand beaches north of Boston and is therefore the tourist beach for quite a large swath of inland regions, including most of Quebec; the coastal route gets pretty busy. Also, it was early Friday afternoon and summer Fridays are notorious for well-to-do Massachusians closing shop early and heading up to their Maine summer homes in Bar Harbor for the weekend. Two out of every three license plates were from Mass. All the others were Quebec. Everyone actually from Maine flees the coast on Memorial Day and doesn't return until Labor Day.

As soon as we rounded the curve and saw York Beach I was amazed at how I remembered it even though I didn't know I did. I'd forgotten, but immediately remembered, how the beach is incredibly wide with a very slight slope into the water. You can run a hundred feet past the waterline and still be in ankle deep water. It isn't the white fluff sand of a Florida or even a California beach, but heavy, dense sand that you can walk on without making much of a footprint. It makes you feel like you're getting your money's worth. We found a spot and parked along the rock retainer wall; we had no bathing suits and not too much time so we plopped 20 minutes in the meter and tossed the kids down the boulders and just let them fly. Their squeals of delight melded with the ocean background roar. They were outrageously happy. They thoroughly violated the "thou shalt not get wet" rule within the first five minutes, not that we really expected otherwise.

Having purged a little pent up car seat pressure, we loaded the gritty kids back into the car where their former squeals of delight transmogrified into whines and complaints about sand in their underwear. With our kids energy expulsion is a dangerous thing if you aren't prepared to quickly restock it with something high-calorie. We had pulled a quick McDonalds stop back outside of Boston, but we'd purposely kept it light and as far as the kids were concerned, that could have been last year. It was definitely time for food, but not just any food. No, since we were on the coast, we absolutely HAD to find a hole-in-the-wall clam shack and get lobsters and steamers (a.k.a. steamed clams). Fearing we were in the thick of the tourist trap areas I decided to risk backseat meltdowns and get a couple dozen miles further up the coast before stopping; we plunged back into the Highway 1 traffic which was already noticeably heavier than before. We skirted York Village and passed through Ogunquit and were making considerably slower progress toward Kennebunkport when disaster struck. I'm not exactly sure what disaster struck, but it clearly struck something because all of a sudden traffic came to a dead stop.

And continued to stop.

It made quite a big deal, actually, of remaining stopped.

For a period that lasted somewhere between, oh... twenty minute and four years, the traffic stood nose-to-toes, just our little car and all of Quebec in a hot shiny line. It didn't go over well in car seat-land.

I thought L was going to give herself a stroke
out of excitement when she saw this truck

By the time traffic broke (we never could really see what the hold-up had been) we were so behind schedule and so tired of the traffic and hassle that we found our first side road back to the interstate and embraced once again the monotony of I-95. The masochistic streak in me kept us peddle to the metal all the way to Bangor where I stopped at a Wendy's only so that the rioting mob in the back would put the roof back on the car. It was almost 9:00 when we pulled into Patten where Mimi and Grampy were waiting up and some gritty and grouchy minors could acquire their baths and PJs.