A week in Maine

Saturday: We left Lititz early and drove the 550 miles to the Summit Hotel at the Sunday River Resort in Bethel, Maine, stopping off at Cape Neddick’s lighthouse along the way and having dinner at the famous Maine Diner after visiting the Lighthouse Depot in Wells, Maine which just may be the world’s largest lighthouse and nautical store.

Sunday: We attended church; had lunch at the Moose Tales restaurant and spent the afternoon relaxing next to the river in Graft Notch State Park and taking in the other natural sites in the area including a couple of waterfalls and “Moose Cave.”

Monday: We spent the day in the White Mountain region of New Hampshire, riding the ski lift up Wildcat Mountain; having a picnic lunch, and then doing some shopping in North Conway and enjoying one of the many ice cream parlors that are prominent in Maine before catching dinner at Pizza Hut on the way back to Bethel.

Tuesday: We drove to Portland and had a picnic lunch overlooking the majestic Portland Head Lighthouse, one of most photographed lighthouse in the world. We spent a short time in Freeport where we came across a chocolate store that gets all of it chocolate from Wilbur’s in Lititz to make all their candy. That night we had a surf & turf dinner at the Fisherman’s Wharf in Boothbay Harbor and drove around the harbor to what is called Ocean Point. This is where I want to live when I retire. What a view! There we watched a beautiful rainbow appear right next to the Ram’s Head lighthouse. We spent the evening sitting on the dock watching the distant lightning of an approaching storm!

Wednesday: We started the day off with shopping in beautiful Boothbay Harbor. The highlight of the day, however, was a 4-hour whale watching excursion aboard the Princess Bride. That’s right…yours truly, who is very scared of water, got out on a small boat 23 miles away from shore with over 500 feet of water below. I can’t even begin to describe the experience of watching two humpback whales out in the wild of the ocean surface, blow water from their spouts, and then dive into the water leaving their massive tales extended above the water…simply amazing. The drive back to Bethel included dinner at the Restaurant by the River at Snow Falls and another stop for ice cream.

Thursday: We spent the morning hanging out in our room at the resort we stayed for the week. Laura worked on an upcoming planning retreat that she is responsible for and I watched our U.S. Soccer team fall in defeat to Ghana in their final World Cup game. We then spent some time going through the shops in the small town of Bethel. That evening we drove south to the Deertrees Theater to see the local area musical called Renys, a lighthearted satire of one of the Pine Tree State’s favorite retailers.

Friday: Our weeklong and wonderful vacation and late anniversary trip came to an end as we checked out and headed home taking a different route right down through the state of Vermont, into Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and good old Pennsylvania.