We’ve been away since Friday on a trip through the NE of the US.
Our good friend from Portland, Maine was getting married on Saturday, so we decided to make the auto trip an adventure, one where we were continually amazed.
This first tranche of photos is from the up-visit to and in Portland.
We spent Friday night in lovely Dunmore, PA- between Scranton and Throop. The Sleep Inn next to I-81 looks a bit sketchy from the outside. The litter and other human debris beside the parking area suggests some type of encampment, but the hotel itself was perfectly functional with comfortable bug-free beds and a modest free hotel breakfast.
The wedding was scheduled to take place on a Portland Harbor cruise that departed the downtown wharf at 6pm. So we had to pray for fair seas across the interstates and toll roads through Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. The Mass Turnpike and through Down East Maine had other ideas. Traffic was thick and boggy, but we had left early and we’re confident we’d make it to the Best Western Merry Manor Inn in South Portland in time to change for the wedding.
We crawled in to our hotel escorted by a thick blanket of Marine layer fog at 3:30 pm after beating the traffic wedges and invisible toll booths. I didn't realize that people don't "pay" tolls any more. Instead, tolls are assessed through some sort of decoder ring ping from your car or from some highly technical alien contraption that gawks at your car every now and then randomly assigns you with a flexible fee that is billed to your home address magically. We expect toll bombs to arrive in our mailbox over the next few weeks and months.
The wedding cruise in Portland Harbor was limited by the fog blanket, but we managed to cruise out to one of the lighthouses that guards the entry to the harbor and celebrated a wonderful union between two mighty fine people.
SWSNBNOFB and I arrived back to the Merry Manor to find an Oscar Meyer Wiener-mobile in our parking lot, shrouded in the mists.
We spent the next couple of days (Sunday and Monday) seeking the light. For the entire time we spent in Portland, we never saw the sun. In fact, there was no hint of the sun. It's like it just disappeared.
Sunday took us north from Portland past Falmouth, Yarmouth, and Bath. Near Wiscasset, we took a right of US Rt 1 and headed toward Georgetown, Maine-at the end of a small peninsula beside the Atlantic. The fog escorted us the whole way. The end of the road featured a dock with a lobster roll shack. We don't much care for seafood. But the misty waters were stunning. The Wiener-mobile was in the hotel parking lot to greet us on our return.
Monday, we went south from Portland and crawled up the coast from Old Orchard Beach to Fort Williams. The fog escorted us the whole way. The sun had ceased to exist.
Monday morning was the dawn of a new day. One that would take us to the interior North East on the tail of their deadly flood event.
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