Now that we are both officially retired, like most people we hope to travel. Unfortunately, COVID has made that a little more complicated than in prior years. Regardless, we have a method to our travel: set our destination for the day, set Google Nav to "avoid highways" and go.
Our first trip is to Maine: specifically to join the family gathering at Happytown Farms near Elsworth where the celebrations of Karen's 80th birthday, Paul's 70th birthday and their 45th wedding anniversary will take place. The other part of the trip was to spend a few days at Catherine Hill Winery outside of Cherryfield, about 45 minutes downeast Route 1 from the Farm. Deb and Walt bought the winery in January of 2020 and have settled into the Maine lifestyle quickly. Open Wednesday to Sunday, their micro winery bottles up some awesome vino.
But first- where to go and what to see. Lots of stuff and lots of place. For those that have not yet seen our "master map" here it is:
Sticking to the let Google sans highways do the navigating we set off for Kingston, NY via the Stargazer's Stone near Embreeville, PA. We have been to the Stone years ago, and it was nice to visit again; heck it was on the way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Gazers%27_Stone
The navigation rules were simple: follow the Google no highways directions, if we drop out of cell coverage for too long, just make it up until we return, avoid chains for meals, and see some cool stuff along the way. So of course, our first lunch under this new paradigm was a Red Robin. The new nav rules lead to some interesting bits of driving- lots of unnumbered roads. The rules could be amended if we were running significantly late or when the only passage is a major road, but for the most part, this worked well.
After lunch, we caught up to 209 and that took us all the way into our motel in Kingston. Just up the road a piece came the highly recommended Boiceville Inn; boy howdy what a great pizza. After ordering the house special, the waitress asked if that included anchovies; of course it includes anchovies. We took the leftovers home and made two more lunches out of them. There was this funky place along the road just east of the inn on 28 with interesting artwork along the road.
It truly an amazing drive and we hope it bodes well for such future travels. With some leftover pizza in our cooler, we stopped in Vergennes Falls Park in Vergennes, VT for lunch. Popular spot for picnics and fishing.
After a short, bug infested walk along to the old canal towpath, we got back on the road heading for Newport.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taconic_orogeny
The Newport City Inn is a funky place along the main street through town; you can tell it has been expanded several times during its life and now has a separate building with a conference center as well as a very nice pool house attached to the rear of the motel. Dinner was from the East Side Restaurant, located on the east side [duh] of Lake Memphremagog. We arrived early and were very glad we did as the line was very, very long for seating as the outdoor areas were closed due to the rain. I tried to get a picture through the windows of the lake but the window screen had that Moiré effect and it looked weird.
Karen and Paul have been successfully running an organic farm since the 1970's- way before it was cool. Their farm is mostly covered in trees including sugar maples which syrup is part of their offerings, as well as free range eggs, turkeys, pigs and some sheep. The party was set up in the front lawn along Happytown Road overlooking Branch Lake- it was an ideal setting.
Karen and Paul renewed their wedding vows and live entertainment was provided by a group of talented fiddlers who seemed to have that whole 'pick up a tune and run with it' which made for some good times. We talked with the cousins; it's such a pretty place to be.
The winery is a busy place, 7 days a week job despite being open for only 5 of them. Although not as labor intense as farming, there are daily tasks to perform just to keep the wine flowing. Monday was an 'off day' meaning there was some early morning chores to perform in the fermenting room as well as some prep work after dinner to get ready for filtering day on Tuesday. This meant the five of us could do some fun things; the weather was nice so we headed off to Lubec, the easternmost point of the lower 48 for a short hike around the woods before heading into town looking for lunch and some craft beer.
Tuesday, our last full day in Maine for this trip, was just us out exploring. We had intended to have an early lunch at the Jordon Pond House; apparently, so did everyone else on Mount Desert Island. The line to get the table pager was over a quarter of a mile long- just after 11am!!!! Popovers will have to wait. So lets head to Stonington and grab some lunch along the way. On our way to Ellsworth from the island we spy what has to be the world's smallest Harley dealer; no bigger than the average lobster roll shack. There wasn't even a boutique or adjacent service building.
Ellsworth is a fun little tourist town; lots of funky art, cool viewing and pedestrians. Good food too. The trip to Stonington was uneventful although it appears those folks who couldn't get into the Jordan Pond House decided to get some ice cream in Stonington.
Retirement trip 1 is in the books. We have some camping, a trip to the Smokey Mountains plus our first full month on Jekyll still coming this fall. Stay tuned.
the whole trip is here:
https://new.spotwalla.com/trip/6197-17130732-4f68/view
