Lobsters and Chowder Tour 2008 - Day 4

Greetings from Bangor, Maine.  Finding lodging is getting more difficult and I had to succumb to actually getting reservations for the next three nights!  And all over $100 each.  But gas is stable at around $4.08/gallon and dinners are not costing too much.  Yet.  When the lobster eatin' kicks in, that budget will be blown!

Our travels today, Wednesday, July 16, my late father's birthday, took us from Waterbury, Vermont, a short tour of the Vermont state capitol building in Montpelier, a very nice sugar maple farm north of Montpelier and of course souvenir syrup!  Then over to Mt. Washington, New Hampshire.  But we were on the wrong side of the mountain to take the Cog Train up and all the road construction had it late in the afternoon.

As it was, that last 40 miles or so was 40 miles of bad road!  We finally veered back onto I-89 and landed one of the last rooms in all of Bangor.  And I thought summer travel would be depressed this year?  You couldn't tell it by this trip.  Not out East anyway.  And prices are hanging high.

A nice Best Western on the west side of Bangor.  An older hotel, redone nicely with great eats from a 40 year old truck stop that sells seafood plus the standard truck stop fare.  But it was very good all around.  The family took advantaged of the hotel hot tub while Dad made reservations.

This day wound up longer than we had hoped, wished or planned for.  But we were in our rooms around 7:30p.m., so not too bad.

Thursday's  travels are planned short to account for heavy traffic and lots of sightseeing, ocean time and lobster and chowder!  A tour down to Bar Harbor just to check it out and then back tracking some to wind down Hwy 1 to Belfast, Maine.  Friday is just a 3 hour excursion through Thomaston to Kennebuck.  Saturday we are booked into Danvers, Mass, about a 2 hour ride.  From there, we will check out Buckman's Tavern and Concord/Lexington and Gloucester, perhaps the next morning.  Its over 3 hours out to Provincetown Cape Cod.  But we want to check out the whale watch tours.  And we want to tour Boston.  So we might stay at Danvers a couple of nights and out on Provincetown one night or two.

That will put us at the start of week #2, so we still have loads of time to extend our Massachusetts stay before heading down to see Newport, Rhode Island and continue heading west.  Perhaps through the beautiful mountains of northern Maryland and an old friend in Cumberland.

So long for now.  I hear lobsters screaming.