Almost There
We were served breakfast by the grumpy Polish landlord of the motel. I don't know if it was a well-rehearsed comic routine or not, with his outraged assertion that putting ketchup on fried egg "ruins your food" and all...
Before long we were in Maine. I don't mind admitting we were scared. Maine has documented cases of: posessed cars, rabid dogs, bullied fire-raising schoolgirls, child-killing supernatural clowns, haunted hotels, murderous avid readers, shops that sell things and pet cemetaries. Fortunately, we haven't seen any of those things yet, except the shops.
We stopped in Rumford because there was a tourist information centre resplendent with a giant John Bunyan figure.
Inside, we got some tourist advice from a nice old lady called Anne, who used to live in Lytham St. Anne's (that's in England). She'd moved to the USA in the 1950s. We told her that Lytham probably hasn't changed much since then (we went there in June -- we went to a kite festival and watched England lose to Sweden in the World Cup first round [Debbie corrects me -- it was a draw, but it felt like a defeat]).
Anne was talkative. She recommended a restaurant in a place we hadn't planned on going to (Belfast -- we might go there yet). She couldn't remember the name of the restaurant, but she stopped every couple of minutes to try again. She told us not to look for accommodation in Bar Harbor itself, and she told us to look in on the Free Shop in Mexico, the neighbouring town. We did look for the Free Shop -- it's something that sounds quite unique. Apparently anyone can just walk in and take whatever they like. I assume it works on donations. Regardless, we couldn't find it, so we couldn't tell Dot that Anne had sent us.
Driving on, we stopped in Skowhegan to look at the World's Biggest Indian. Remember we saw the World's Biggest Indian in Ironwood? Hmm, me too.
This indian was pretty classy though, I thought.
Road Trip USA suggests skipping US-2 from Newport to Bangor. We shunned this advice, and I'm glad we did. We've use the two-lane road wherever possible for 4000 miles (we hit the 4000 mark this morning), we're not about to start skipping bits by taking the Interstate now.
We ate in Bangor. Bangor is the epicentre of the whole schoolgirl telepathic arsonist, axe-wielding snowbound writers thing. Nothing untowards happened. We had three Taco Bell tacos each. First Taco Bell visit of the holiday. The drive to Bangor felt a little weird. It turned out one of the tyres was quite flat. I filled it at a garage until it looked right, but the pump had no pressure guage to get it right. After that it felt terribly solid, so I went into the garage and asked to borrow a guage -- it was one of those basic pen-like ones where the air from the valve blows a marked core out. I had to let out a lot of air before it was right; I'm going to have to keep an eye on it. Having typed all that, it really doesn't seem interesting enough to justify the lineage. I suggest you skip this paragraph...
It wasn't far to Ellsworth then. Ellsworth is the closest place to Bar Harbor (the end of our route, remember, apart from the run down to Boston for the plane home) where we think we can afford to stay. Bar Harbor is a bit of a tourist Mecca...
We have a nice room for the next two nights in Ellsworth. This is convenient because it has two mini-golf courses. We tried one. It was a good course, if a little warm. They want to fix that. I won again, by the way.
We ate at a place called the Maine Luau, right across the road from the motel. They do barbeque and seafood. Debbie had a BBQ steak, and I had lobster for the first time. The waitress was kind enough to talk me through the crustacean dismemberment process, and I enjoyed it a lot. I have 28 years of not eating lobster to make up for.
We watched American Idol: the US version of Pop Idol, just to see how Simon Cowell conducts himself. There are only five contestants left, so he hasn't the scope to insult anyone properly, just damn them with faint praise. The audience are happy to bay at him like dogs though, so he's obviously managed to hit some nerves.
Incidentally, you do know that man has ruined the music industry?