Farewall Massachusetts, Hello Maine

Day 8 - August 4th

We left Boston early and drove North to our first stop at

Ogunquit in Maine, passing through about 20 miles of New Hampshire on the way. So many of the towns round here have familiar names, presumably the settlers just named them after their old home towns. So far we've passed Warwick, Coventry, Salisbury, Belfast, Amesbery, Newbury, Portsmouth, York, Dover, Scarborough... and that's just the ones without 'New' stuck on the front. New England is certainly a fitting name for the area.

Anyway, back to Ogunquit, which I'm pretty sure isn't named after an English town. It's a beautiful seaside town with a long sandy beach one one side and cliff-top walk on the other. We took a short stroll along the cliffs, went for a paddle in the sea and had lunch (taking full

advantage of the huge array of seafood on offer) before heading north again. The next stop was Freeport - a collection of outlet stores for big brands like Gap, Timberland, etc. It's a bit like Bicester Village except weirdly it's an real town rather than a purpose built mall - quite how that happened is a mystery but it must be convenient for the residents to be surrounded by discount stores.

From Freeport it was another 3 hours drive up to Acadia park on Mount Desert island. We arrived in the early evening, crossing the bridge onto the island and then driving the last few miles to South West Harbor down a winding road with the sun low in the sky, it really was beautiful. We checked into our hotel in the centre of the small town and strolled past large houses in their beautifully kept gardens, and marina filled with huge yachts (this is clearly an area awash with money) to a restaurant called Beal's Lobster Pier down on the harbor front. We picked out our lobster from the tank and a bottle of wine from the fridge (you know it's a classy joint when you pick your own wine from the fridge) which we drank from plastic cups while our dinner was boiled alive.

Needless to say the lobster was delicious, as was the wine, unfortunately as soon as the sun set the mosquitoes descended - we only sat there for five minutes after we spotted the first one but in that time Amy managed to pick up at least 20 bites and I managed to get bitten several times on my hand and even on my thigh, despite wearing trousers. Those mosquitoes meant business! On the way back to hotel a couple of deer bounded across the road, straight through someone's garden and off into the trees behind.