Maine-ly Desert Vacation

Useless Fact of the Day:

There is a 300 acre desert of glacial silt in the middle of the woods in Freeport, Maine.


A few weeks ago, Steven had mentioned that he had never been to Maine, and that we should go there some time. Right around the same time, my chiropractor took a vacation to Maine, and when she came back she told me that she and her husband went to a place in Freeport where they have a genuine desert, about 3 miles from the LL Bean headquarters store (it is open 24 hrs/day, by the way, which I find to be very funny, because you never know when you might need to get some flannel at 3 o'clock in the morning. It's like Maine's version of the Ron Jon Surf Shop.)

Well, on a whim Steven and I decided we were going to take a little trip up to Maine this weekend and check it out. We flew up to Boston on Thursday, rented a car, drove to my parentals' place in Connecticut, spent the night there and made our trek to Maine the next day. The weather was absolutely wretched. When we left my parents' house on Friday it was just starting to rain, and it rained non-stop the whole 2 hour drive up to Maine. (I love that in New England you can go through 4 states in 2 hours.)

We happened upon some luck as the rain stopped as we were entering Portland. Freeport is only about 20 minutes north of Portland, and it would suck to be trying to explore a desert in the rain.

Anyway, here we are at the Desert of Maine:


And here's my camel toe:


This place was fascinating to me. I'll spare you the history here, but if you care to hear about how this desert came to be, feel free to ask me, and I'll be happy to educate, enlighten, enrich, and entertain.

Here are a couple more shots of the desert:


Then we went back down to Portland and visited the Portland Head Light:


It was beautiful, and we definitely felt very Mainey being there in the cold and fog in the middle of July, but if I had to live somewhere like that, I would kill myself.

Anytime I go somewhere on vacation, I make it a point to get in the water (at least stick my feet in anyway), just so I can say I went in [insert water feature here]. Here's me in the Atlantic Ocean on the coast of Maine, brrrrrr! It's wicked cold!


Then we went and had dinner at this neat restaurant called Eggspectation. It had a great atmosphere, an innovative menu selection (obviously focused on eggs, but pretty all-inclusive with a little bit of everything), and it was pretty inexpensive. So, if you're ever in Portland, go eat at Eggspectation; it's near the Maine Mall right off the highway. It was neat. Then we got Steven some new flight attendant shoes at the Bass outlet, and just as we were getting on the highway to head back to Connecticut, the sky opened up again. We were grateful that we got to spend the whole day without getting wet, but it's frustrating driving 150 miles in a torrential downpour in an Aveo. Boo to that. Damn those remnants of Cindy.

So then we hung with the parentals a little bit yesterday morning, drove back to Boston, visited Deer Island out in the bay, took a couple of pictures of the Boston skyline, and then jumped on a plane and got home late last night.

And that's the end of my story.