It's Lobstah, Not Lobster

Ports Head Lighthouse

Oh, hey! Remember me? The one you last saw in this space talking about how much fun it is to travel when the kids are adults? Today allow me to add a category to that "It's so much fun to travel when..." category.

It's so much fun to travel when you're traveling in the fall.

Back in the day, when the school calendar dictated that we schedule our vacations between early June (when it's really hot) and mid-August (when it's downright hellish), we did not let weather or crowds keep us off the road. We packed up the kids and the camper and headed for all the points of the compass, sweating and hydrating and fighting the crowds.

Even then, though, Husband vowed that some day, some glorious day, we would never hit the road when the thermometer hit triple digits. He did not actually use the phrase "AS GOD IS MY WITNESS!" but that was definitely implied.

And so, last year we spent an October week in Michigan and loved it. This year, I had a denominational commitment in Chicago during mid-October and Husband off-handedly said "Would you want to go out to Portland for a few days from there?"

I was packing before he put the closing quote marks on that sentence.

I've only been to Maine twice before, but I purely love it. I love the really, really, really tall trees and the friendly natives. I love thinking "Hey! That's the ocean!" when I see a body of water. I love the flinty granite roadsides, so different from our Midwestern limestone. And after a rather craptastic spring, I was ready for a fantastic fall.

We were gone eight days total, and if we consider one of those days traveling to Chicago, a Chicago day, a second travel day, and a travel day home, we really only had four full days on the coast. But oh, my. What a four days.

We saw lighthouses and islands. We traveled up to Bath and down to Portsmouth. We saw trees with colors so vivid they couldn't possibly be natural. (I'm calling shenanigans on those trees.) We searched centuries-old graveyards and froze our noses on rocky beaches. We ate our way through the state's finest (and not so fine) delicacies.

I am a Kansan, down to my DNA and neutral anchorman's accent. But if I weren't, I think I'd be a Maine-lander.

Especially in the fall.

(Tomorrow: What we ate.)