3 States in 1 Day and MASSCHAOS

Yesterday we took a trip up to Maine. To do so, we had to drive out of Mass, through some of New Hampshire and then on into Maine. That is one of the cool things about New England; the states are small enough and close together enough that it is really easy to go state-hopping! Our friends Wendy, Gary and Nick were staying at their beach cottage near Old Orchard Beach so we decided, based on the trusty advice of our GPS and google maps, to embark on the approximately 90 minute trip there and back in one day.

We quickly learned that all driving time estimates, particularly in the summer, need to be adjusted to account for the Masschaos factor. This happens in Massachusetts when just about everyone who lives here, and everyone south of us from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania etc all decide that they need to be at the beach (Maine) or at the lake (New Hampshire) on the same sunny Saturday. We spent our morning alternating b/tw being parked on the "freeway," to driving about 20 miles an hour to occasionally hitting 60 mph before slamming on the brakes again either to avoid an accident or to rubber neck one (along with everyone else) that we were fortunate enough to avoid. Throughout it all, we kept asking incredulously...."what is going on????? It's Saturday morning for cripe's sake!" Yes, and Saturday is the day that all the vacation homes switch over so folks head home, and folks head in. Perhaps some of these vacation home owners might consider staggering their check-in/check-out dates...might save alot of people, alot of headaches! I have already packed some tylenol for our foray down to Cape Cod next Saturday to check into our vacation rental, where I hear that what we experienced on the I-495 and I-95 yesterday was mere miniMASSCHAOS from what we will experience next Saturday.

Regardless of the nearly 3 hour drive to the beach in Maine, we had a great day. Kai is a definite beach bum as his little tanned legs and windblown hair can attest! For some reason he decided to call the beach "eek" yesterday (instead of "each," which is what he normally calls it). But whatevah, he had a great time at the "eek" digging in the sand, running everywhere, checking out seashells, wading in surf-less inlets, and running everywhere some more. I enjoyed my dip into the cool Atlantic and catching up with a good friend.

On the way home, we stopped in Portsmouth, NH, to make it a 3 state day. We've been curious about Portsmouth as it is a potential future temporary home for us. We definitely liked what we saw. I would describe it best as a combination of Bar Harbor, Maine, and Halifax, Nova Scotia with a teensy little bit of Victoria thrown in for good measure. We saw centuries old historic buildings, cafes and restaurants, neat little alleys filled with trinket shops, coffee shops and ice cream shops (many of the non-chain store variety - woot woot!) and winding roads...all of it surrounded by ocean inlets and the Piscataqua River (sp?) filled with working boats, leisure boats, ferries and kayaks. We gave it a thumb's up and will definitely have it high on our wish list for our post-MIT move.

Here is Kai, hanging on the beach with the guys.