Leaving Maine is always tough. My folks are so easy to be with and the time spent there so relaxing that it is always depressing to go. And there's always that "when will we meet again?" thing going. I expect we'll all reconvene either on the east or west coast sometime next year, but we're given few promises in this world. So every time we say good-bye there's a little tiny shred of terror buried deep down. Trusting in Providence is never as easy as one is lead to believe.
As usual, we hit the road a little later than we intended on Friday, but our plans were modest so it wasn't too troubling. We would head down to the coast and get that lobster lunch/dinner that we'd been denied on the trip north, then we'd buzz south to the Boston metro area where we'd have dinner and spend the night with some of Stacy's friends. Beantown by sundown seemed like a reasonably do-able day.We swung past the farm house on our drive out of town and gave hugs and kisses to Grammy Betty. Dad had beat us down there and was mowing her lawn on the riding mower, so the kids got to wave frantically to him out the car window as pulled off. (I grew up with riding lawn mowers, but my ever lengthening stint in Southern California is making me realize what foreign concepts they are to real-estate deprived Angelenos.) An uneventful hour and a half later we were in Bangor where I thought it wise to swing by a book store to pick up a fresh atlas. I wasn't as willing to run the east coast again with a map that was published before all fifty states were official.
From Bangor we jumped on Highway 1A which took us down to the coast where we picked up iconic Highway 1 and began scouting out lobster shacks. By this point it was getting significantly past noon and the kids getting into their starvation-induced melt downs. These melt-downs irritate me, but REALLY wear on Stacy. The more whiny the kids got, the more the co-pilot pressure to find the lobster shack of my dreams and do it quickly. I turned off the air conditioner because the car kept getting colder with every lobster restaurant I passed with a flippant "That's not what I had in mind." I envisioned the rough-and-tumble shack right on the coastal rocks with a couple of hundred still-wet lobster traps lining the wall and little fuss; there would be a window where they take your order, the same window where they would yell your number a few minutes later. During the interim you would sit at the 20 or so picnic tables scattered about, or the kids would play ominously on the seaweed-slippery rocks at the water's edge. Striped down, unadorned, plain-Jane, thrifty and 100% authentic. Such was my vision, and thus far it had not been fulfilled. That's not to say there weren't lobstertunities! Every dive on the drive had a big "Lobsters!" sign out, but all these places were also inside and had table clothes and fabric napkins and way too much service. I am a Maine lobster purist!
Finally we came to Belfast at the mouth of the Passagassawakeag River on Penobscot Bay. (And no, I didn't make up those undeniably Maine names.) We were approaching 1 o'clock and Stacy, as the representative of the children's union, could endure no longer and threw an arm across my face, pointing out my window: "There!" "There" was a sign for a lobster pound a quarter of a mile down the side road right on the coast. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes one word is worth a thousand. Stacy's "There!" was one of those types of words; her case was stated clearly, thoroughly, emphatically and irrevocably and I knew beyond all doubt or argument that my hunting trip for the perfect pound had come to a decisive end. I turned around at the nearest parking lot, returned to the side street and headed down to the coast.
Having just given my lobster pound criteria, I have to admit that it met all the key requirements. It was on the coast, they really caught their own lobsters and cooked them on site. There was a place to put in and pick up your order, and there were picnic tables out in the sun. And much to L and N's delight, there were huge tanks with hundreds of live critters to gawk at. What could be wrong, I thought. And yet there was a cold trepidation in my heart and I noticed something that should have been a light bulb over the old noggin. There were no Maine cars in the considerably full parking lot. But once the kids were out of the car, however, the die was cast.My Dad had told me this was the year for the lobster connoisseur in Maine. The harvest had been unusually large, and that, coupled with the economic downturn that was limiting the number of out-of-state orders by high-end restaurants, meant that lobster was dirt cheap this year as low as $3 or $4 a pound!. (On the downside, the lobster industry is dying a horrible economic death.) Evidently, however, this particular lobster pound hadn't gotten the memo. They were low-side compliant on the food and high-side compliant on the price. We ended up getting one order of a 1-1/2 lb lobster with a side of steamed clams and a mini bag of chips for $19.99 (plus tax) and a "double" order of two 1-1/4 lb lobsters and the bag of chips for $29.99. No bread. No coleslaw. No potato. No corn. No drinks. All that was a la carte and significantly extra. You got one small paper napkin - additional ones were $0.75. A second Styrofoam plate was $1. Once we added the drinks we couldn't avoid and threw in the tax we ended up paying well over $60 for essentially 3 small to medium lobsters and the clams to divide up among the four of us.
Once we ordered we waited pretty close to a half hour for it to be cooked. I was bitter. I was also hungry. Lobsters are delicious, and these were certainly tasty specimens, but they're not exactly dietary bulk. That's the job of the baked potato, coleslaw and corn on the cob! Stacy and I each had a lobster and the kids were to split the third. Of course, despite their joyful declarations of lobster love all the way down the pike from Patten, once the red bug was on the plate in front of them they would have nothing to do with it. (L, to her credit, did find the claws fascinating and somehow managed to secure the empty shells and stow them away back in the car with us when we left. Really nice by the time we got to Boston.) So at least Stacy and I got to split #3. And of course, by now the kids were only more ravenous than when we'd pulled in. Stacy and I endured the wailings of the food-deprived long enough to bolt our lobsters, and then fled to the car. A half mile down the road was... sigh... a Wendy's, so we dropped another $20 on burgers and baked potatoes to round out our rather disappointing dinner.
L, not too keen on ole Mr. Snapclaws
Convinced that Coastal Maine was not on our side this trip, we decided to abandon any lingering plans for a relaxing Highway 1 ride, choosing instead to head inland and eventually pick up the oh-so-exciting Interstate 95 in Augusta. Probably the right choice, because our lunch snafus had put us in serious doubt about making it to Boston by dinnertime, but the real bummer was that it precluded us from swinging through Lewiston, Maine to storm my Cousin Kim's castle. I got to see Kim and her family last year at my grandmother's funeral, but I would love to spend more time with them under less momentous circumstances. But my planning skills (or lack there of) are legendary. We hadn't contacted Kim or made plans with her to get together. But I was secretly hoping we'd have had time to give a call and sweep through on our race past.
Sorry Kim! Not seeing you guys was my one big regret of the entire vacation. (OK, paying 60 bucks for a sad lobster lunch was another regret, but you get my drift.) Here's to 2010!
The rest of the drive down was uneventful, though there was a renewed twinge of angst went we crossed the bridge from Maine into Portsmouth, New Hampshire. We got into Boston pretty late, but Kurt and Susie Richardson greeted us warmly and had held off on grilling chicken for us. Kurt and Susie are long-time friends of Stacy's from her old Campus Crusade days, and Stacy will tell you her current worldview, both Christian and secular, was greatly influenced and molded by her working with them for about a year down in Arizona. I'd met them each briefly once before on separately occasions -- Kurt had come to our wedding, and I had met Susie briefly one evening when Stacy came to Phoenix with me on a business trip -- but I had never had a chance to really get to know them, so we were both greatly looking forward to our time with them.
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