Coast to Coast

After a great few days in the CA sunshine, I headed to the diagonal opposite side of the country to Maine. I took the week off to try to see more and drive less. Mostly, I just drove. I made a stop in Albuquerque to have a birthday party for Mom, and then up through Denver to Mt. Rushmore.

Mt. Rushmore was very cool, and amazing. Like, how ?? Actually, there was a ton on info on how, and it was all very well documented. Still amazing!

You know I had to do it .. but the AI was so good, you couldn’t even tell it was Kirk. So, I had to use a different picture:

From Mt Rushmore, I headed east through South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and then to Chicago, Illinois to pick up my daughter from the airport, as she was going to drive with me to Maine. I loved driving through South Dakota, with a speed limit of 80, and very few cars. As I kept going east, the speed limit went down and the cars increased exponentially. I didn’t stop much except to admire the beautiful, clean and well maintained rest stops in these states! Actually, I did stay overnight in Minnesota, but thought it was Michigan, because why do so many states start with an “M” ?? And the driving and time zones were really messing with my brain function.

From Chicago, we stopped in every state:

Finally we reached Niagara Falls, NY. I was very excited about this, but the excitement didn’t last too long. Niagara Falls, the city, was kinda weird. We got in late, the hotel clerk was not excited to see us, and the on site restaurant closed half hour early when they saw us walking in. When I say late, it was 8:30pm. So we wandered out into the town and found it mostly deserted, and shut down. But lo and behold … there was a shining light on the corner, and as we got closer we gasped, could it really be? It is true ?It is real ? Is this a scam ? It was a pizza vending machine!!

You swap your credit card, a timer stars, hear some machinery going and then voilà, a hot pizza pops out! It was about the equivalent of a grocery store Tony’s pizza for $18, But hey, it was hot and we were hungry. No complaints here!!

We wandered over to the park area to see if we could see the falls at night, and right as we arrived, the fireworks started! Fireworks? We had no idea! We ate Tony’s vending machine pizza, watching fireworks over Niagara Falls, it turned out to be a great night!

The next morning, it was cold, windy and rainy! Perfect weather for a trip on the Maiden of the Mist, the boat that takes you right next to the falls. It was so cool! I had no idea how wide the falls were, and that there were multiple falls. It was amazing! It was very cute that everyone on the American side of the falls had blue rain jackets, and everyone in the Canadian boats across the river had red jackets. This is one of those places that you can see a million pictures of, but when you see it in person, you go.. Wow!

This is my favorite picture of the entire trip!

Hey wait, Kirk Knievel didn’t jump over these falls ??!

After that early morning adrenaline rush, we drove on through Vermont and New Hampshire and then up to Bangor, Maine. After our vending machine pizza, we stopped at a Sonic for a corndog in Schenectady, NY and it sucked! Way overcooked and honestly kinda creepy looking. We got off the interstate to drive through Vermont and passed a million little small towns, all of them sporting some sort of moose themed store. It was a nice drive, but we arrived late again in Bangor, so we split a gas station sandwich.

Friday, we had to make a quick stop in Bangor to see Stephen King’s house. Apparently he doesn’t live there anymore, but he’s still associated with it and it looks pretty much how you’d expect it to look!

Onward to Acadia National Park! We rented eBikes and cruised around the lakes and ponds all afternoon. The guy told us if we ran out of battery, they would not come get us. So I was extremely conservative with my “assist” mode. For future reference, most of the uphill is on the way in. Once I realized I had plenty of battery left, I cranked that thing up as far as it would go. Maybe not quite a motorcycle, but you can really get those things moving! Once again, Sacagawea navigated us around the park, and to a billion beautiful photo spots. This was really the best way to see the park, but if you haven’t ridden a bike in awhile, you might find it difficult to sit the next day!

After the pizza & gas station sandwiches, and the butt-numbing ride around the park, I wanted some ‘Lobstah’ for dinner!!! We stayed in Bar Harbor, which is a cute little tourist town, filled with Moose and Lobster paraphernalia. And yes, we had a fabulous lobster, crab, shrimp, scallop dinner !!! Freaking YUM!

The next day, we drove down to a little town called Ogunquit, which was close to our “fun run” the next day in South Berwick, ME. The Pumpkinman Running Festival promised an amazing after race feast so we all signed up months ago. Me, my daughter, and my Boston daughter’s entire family. Well, the best laid plans … The Boston family had a bit of a fire extinguisher emergency and a very sick little camper. Then, the rain starting falling and did not stop. Being the troopers we are (and a bit masochistic), we made it to the starting line. My daughter ran the 1/2 marathon in the cold, wet, miserable rain. Just to be clear, this was not a drizzle, or an on/off rain shower. This was a full on, nonstop, relentless rain the entire time. I was only running the Pumpkin “Pi” Race (3.14159… miles .. get it?? get it?? ), and when I say I was running it, I really mean I was walking it. Luckily for me, I kept the very cool rain poncho from the Maid of the Mist boat in Niagara Falls. Everyone else was sporting their high tech running rain gear, but I was wearing the big blue poncho! It made me look like a big blue condom, but also made me very easy to spot. Only half of the Boston family made it, but they brought galoshes & rain coats and arrived ready to go. In the end, everyone finished. Some of us almost hit a PR driven by angst about the weather and every other stupid thing in life. Some of us just got it over with and tried not to be too embarrassed by the ridiculous rain poncho they were wearing. Others had to cajole and persuade, and one did NOT want to cross that finish line. The feast did not disappoint! We had apple cider mimosas, pumpkin beer, sweet potato hash, frittatas, and a myriad of other pumpkin goodies.

We dried off and spent the afternoon in the comfort of a dry motel room and a quaint New England pub with pumpkin beer & sweet potato fries!! How quaint!

Everyone left on Sunday and I moseyed on down the Maine coast on Monday, towards my next house sit in Boston.