We left the Lubec, Maine area and headed to the Narrows Too Camping Resort in Trenton, Maine. The campground was an easy drive from both Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park. (My review of the campground is available here.)
I have to admit that, in general, I’m not a fan of “touristy” towns like Bar Harbor; the sheer number of people everywhere overwhelms me. I’m not comfortable stopping to look at architecture (something I love) or anything else because stopping is a good way to get trampled. Of course, if we were going to be in Maine and within spitting distance of Bar Harbor, we had to go. (We actually went twice.🙄) It was every bit as stressful as I expected it to be. The roads were narrow with vehicles parked down both sides which meant a big truck like Ruby was practically in the middle of the road. Parking was difficult to find. We found a park at the far end of town and parked there during both of our visits.
We did stumble across a really cool restaurant in Bar Harbor – Route 66. Route 66 features a lot of things I love: old architecture, high ceilings, stained glass windows, and vintage tchotchkes. The food was pretty good too.😉 We sat in the loft area of the restaurant which wasn’t crowded at all and gave us a good vantage point from which to view everything. It was a great place to relax, refuel, and prepare to take on the crowds again.
Route 66 interior. So cool!
Vintage tchotckes at Route 66
Fried mac and cheese bites. Yum!
While I may not like touristy towns I did take advantage of our visits to Bar Harbor to buy souvenirs and a few Christmas gifts. When in Rome, right?🤷♀️
We only planned three nights, two full days in the area. It rained the first full day which gave us an unexpected but much needed down day. The second full day we reserved for Acadia National Park but I’ll save that post for next week.
Our 2021 road trip up the eastern coast of the United States served multiple purposes. First and foremost was for us to see areas of the country that we haven’t visited before. However, Maine was our ultimate destination and where we would spend the most time. We arrived at Sunset Point RV Park in the tiny town of Lubec, Maine on September 11th, two days earlier than scheduled; the staff was awesome and worked with us to accommodate our early arrival. I wondered why the park was named “Sunset Point”; my question was answered that evening.
So THIS is why it’s named Sunset Point!
Maggie belonged to one of our campground neighbors; she was a Very Good Girl
Lubec is a tiny town with a population less than 2,000 in the 2010 census; it is also the easternmost municipality in the contiguous United States. So, what made us choose Lubec as the location for the first extended stay of our trip? Kenn has friends who have spent a couple of summers in Lubec; they highly recommended both the area and the RV park. This was enough for us.
I love old, small towns and enjoy walking around and looking at the architecture, etc. Lubec did not disappoint. The “downtown” area is small, no more than two or three blocks.
An old building in downtown Lubec. I loved the silhouette of the roof line against the sky.
Someone had set up quite the wonderful hangout for this cat on the front porch of one of the buildings down town. S/he had easy access to food and water and even an insulated area for cold weather. Being the cat people that we are, we stopped to chat with the kitty but s/he could not be bothered to acknowledge our presence.😂
We could see Canada from Lubec. As a matter of fact, there is a bridge into Canada right next to the Lubec post office. Sadly, due to the pandemic, we did not attempt to cross the border.😢
Canada – so close and yet so far
Suffice it to say that there aren’t a plethora of restaurants in Lubec but we did enjoy Fisherman’s Wharf, the small restaurant located at The Inn on the Wharf. We had breakfast there after viewing the sunrise at West Quoddy Head. (I’ll write a separate post about this.) We may be the only people to have traveled to Maine and not eaten seafood.🤷♀️ (I don’t like seafood and crab/lobster makes Kenn sick.) However, I did indulge in pancakes loaded with fresh Maine blueberries. This guy kept us company (from a distance) while we ate.
I fell in love with the rocky Maine coast. Stay tuned for more posts containing oodles of pictures. Until then, happy trails!
This is what I thought every time I saw a sign for Moosic, Pennsylvania.😂🐄 A quick internet search revealed others with my sense of humor and love of cows.
During all of our previous trips, we have kept interstate travel to a minimum. The idea of towing in high-speed, bumper-to-bumper travel didn’t appeal to either of us. All of that changed with our recent trip; with as many miles as we were traveling, interstate was frequently the simplest way to get from Point A to Point B. Of course, interstate travel also meant that I didn’t do much driving on this time around.
This trip was a learning experience for us in many ways and one of the things we were learning was just how far we could comfortably travel in a day. The most we traveled in one day was 377 miles; we started the morning in Blountsville, Tennessee and stopped for the night in Williamsport, Maryland. Biggest lesson learned: 377 miles in one day is bit much. Going forward, somewhere between 250 and 300 miles a day will be our goal.
Most of the 377 miles mentioned above was spent crossing Virginia on I-81. If you are ever traveling the same route, I have two things to say: 1) Bless your heart and 2) I’m sorry. Virginia is a beautiful state and I would love to spend some time there NOT on the interstate. What makes this stretch so bad? First, it’s the trucks; there are semis everywhere. Second are the rest areas. Or maybe I should say, the lack of rest areas. Many of the rest areas in Virginia are Cars Only, which rules out anyone towing a travel trailer. The rest areas that do allow trucks (and therefore RVs/travel trailers) tend to be overflowing with semis. It was often easier to just keep driving than to find somewhere to stop and stretch our legs (or get away from the trucks) for a bit.
Sunset at the Unadilla / I-88 / Oneonta KOA in New York
Much to our surprise, the day we “only” drove 282 miles on mostly non-interstate roads was the day that really took the wind out of our sails. We started the morning in Unadilla, New York and stopped for the night in Lake Winnipesauki, New Hampshire. I was so looking forward to a day without being on the interstate but driving the back roads of Vermont with road work around every other curve was not a relaxing experience at all, LOL.
Another thing we learned is how much the condition of the roads impacts your travel. As native Georgians, most of our trips are in the Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina area and its a running joke with us how bad the roads are in South Carolina. Seriously, as soon as you cross the border into South Carolina, the roads become absolute garbage. (Unless you’re near Clemson University; those roads are pristine.🙄) However, the roads in the south aren’t exposed to the same weather extremes as those in the northern states. Not only do the northern roads take a beating from the weather but there is a shortened season for repairing that damage so there was roadwork absolutely everywhere. (One of our neighbors at a KOA in Maine used to pave roads in the state for a living and he said that they were required to have all road surface work completed by October 1st or October 15th depending on the location.) Also, after a day of taking a beating from the roads sometimes you go to bed and still feel like you’re being bounced around, LOL.
I try to think of each trip as an opportunity to learn. Our trip out west in 2019 taught us to take the weather at our destination into consideration when planning a trip. (Some areas actually have winter weather that lasts more than a couple of weeks. Who knew?😂) This trip we learned not to over-estimate how far we can comfortably travel in a day and also that other things such as road conditions or other unexpected delays may impact our plans and that that’s okay. We haven’t quite made the mental transition from traveling while working, which meant that we had a limited amount of time available before we had to be back at work, to traveling while retired which means that our schedule can be adjusted as needed. We’re working on it.
I’m baaaaack! Did you miss me?😄 The Great Road Trip of 2021 is officially in the books. This trip was originally planned for the Fall of 2020 but with COVID and everything, including campgrounds, shutting down, we postponed it until this year. This was the longest trip we’ve ever taken with a travel trailer. We were were on the road for 28 days from September 7th to October 4th.
The map on our travel trailer at the beginning of the trip
Over the course of the trip we covered 12 states (including our home state of Georgia), and a total of 4,856 miles. States visited:
Georgia
South Carolina
North Carolina
Tennessee
Virginia
West Virginia
Maryland
Pennsylvania
New York
Vermont
New Hampshire
Maine
True, some of those states were only overnight stays but that all it takes for us to get a new sticker on the map. (My rule: if we don’t overnight in the state, we don’t get a sticker.) We changed our route back to give us a chance to overnight in a couple of states that we otherwise would not have. Even just overnighting in a state gave us a chance to see a new-to-us part of the country. Looking at our updated map makes me feel very accomplished, LOL.
Our map now
I took my laptop with me so I could work on blog posts and the short story release I had planned for October. (I write under the pen name Isabella Norse.) I never took the laptop out of the closet, LOL. I spent my time just relaxing and enjoying the trip. I’ll spend the next few weeks sharing details. In the meantime, I’m glad to be back home and am busily getting caught up on all of the things that accumulated while we were away.
When I learned that Devil’s Tower was on our route to Glacier National Park it became a must-see destination. Devil’s Tower features prominently in Close Encounters of the Third Kind which is one of my all-time favorite movies. Needless to say, as soon as it came into view on the horizon we had to pull over so I could have a total fan girl moment.
There may have been squealing involved when Devil’s Tower came into view
Devil’s Tower is still considered a sacred place to Native Americans and others so, if you visit, please be respectful by staying on the trails and not disturbing the prayer bundles and prayer cloths you will see in the trees and shrubbery.
One of my favorite memories of The Great Road Trip of 2019 comes from our visit to Devil’s Tower. As we hiked the trail around the base of the tower we had one of those “it’s a small world” experiences; we met a man from the Atlanta area, just a couple of hours north of our hometown and a young man and his son from South Carolina. (We have family in both North and South Carolina so we were familiar with the area from which the young man hailed.) We all chatted, then went our separate ways. Each time our paths crossed, we would stop and visit again. Finally, the young dad asked, “Does everyone here keep apologizing to y’all for the humidity?” We all had a good laugh. Indeed, one of the park rangers had expressed concern that our visit was occurring during such high humidity. Y’all the humidity level was 25%. For native Southerners, 25% doesn’t even register on our humidity scale. As far as we were all concerned, the air was downright dry.😂
Sadly, no UFOs made an appearance during our visit but Devil’s Tower did not disappoint.🛸
It was The Great Road Trip of 2019. We were driving through Arkansas and were getting tired and hungry when we noticed a sign for the town of Toad Suck. After confirming that we did both, in fact, see the words “Toad Suck” we pulled off in Conway and found a restaurant. Our server was happy to tell us about Toad Suck, where to find it, and the fact that there is now a Toad Suck festival every spring. Once we had eaten and were feeling human again, we made the drive to Toad Suck. It should come as no great surprise to anyone that there’s not a lot to see; it truly is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town. (Surprisingly, there is an Army Corp of Engineers campground in Toad Suck.) However, there is a sign perfect for selfies and a convenience store (which was brand new in 2019) featuring Toad Suck themed souvenirs.
Y’all, we seriously suck at selfies
I had to have the shirt
While we were struggling to get a somewhat decent selfie in front of the Toad Suck sign, a battered, older Toyota truck pulled over next to us, and the driver called out through the open window “What in the world are y’all doin’?” I explained that when you see a sign with the words “Toad Suck” you have to stop and take a selfie. He followed up with “Y’all ain’t from around here, are you?” we assured him that we were not and proceeded to have an enjoyable conversation. I know that Arkansas is considered a Southern state but mentally I don’t think of it as one. I have to admit I didn’t expect an Arkansan to sound way more Southern than I do.🤷♀️😂
The next day as we motored though Missouri, we came across signs for the town of Peculiar so, once again, we had to pull over and take pictures. I think of Peculiar as a fairly typical older, small town – with an unusual name. As a matter of fact, I didn’t find out how the town got its name until after we got home.
There are so many beautiful and unusual things to see in this country of ours. It’s important to take the time to stop and smell the roses, check out the town with the strange name, and take the bad selfie. (I know, it’s not always easy when you’re towing a travel trailer. During this trip, we weren’t.)
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