Traveling Toward Retirement

Today we enjoyed a quiet morning as we awoke to fog surrounding our cottage in the woods. Todd and I brewed a pot of coffee and enjoyed some leisurely conversation while the house slept.  Showers and breakfast led us all to moving out the door mid morning heading east to Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor.  It’s one of the ten most visited national parks with over 4 million visitors a year. And we added six to that number!  Here we are at the top of Cadillac Mountain. We found some short hikes and the visitors center…which was up a few flights of beautifully crafted stone stairs. The day was delightful with some light fog but warm temperatures. A perfect day for walking and enjoying nature. The park is huge and extends down to the ocean. We found kids splashing around and enjoying the waves while we enjoyed a few snapshots and sent thankful thoughts to the parking gods that blessed us with a close spot. Yelp guided us to Melt which was a hit for some and a miss for other...

We landed at 5:45am and while some of us slept on the plane, others were quite groggy. We caught a bus to the rental car lot and grabbed a nice looking Chrysler Pacifica mini van for our two week jaunt around the east coast. We packed our luggage in and began our drive to Portland Maine.  We first stopped along the way at a Panera because caffeine was needed to finish the two hour drive to Portland. There was some grumbling about how the coffee isn’t as good as Starbucks but compliments about how their bagels are far superior. We left full enough to find ourselves on the road again at 9am. Panera had the right idea with this sign… We pulled into Cape Elizabeth around 10am and found ourselves detouring through a cute community of homes as there was road construction blocking the main drive. We were able to see some lovely architecture and beautiful houses as we oohed and awed at the manicured gardens.  Some of those houses were multimillion dollar estates and others were around...

We departed at 3pm and made our way to San Francisco to catch a red eye to Boston. We have no interest in Boston except for their cheap airport. Our first destination in Portland Maine and we hope to hit that town around 9am tomorrow.  But first we have a five hour flight and hopefully some sleep to catch. We got dinner at Panda Express before heading off to the airport. Panda has rewards now guys! We got 25% off of our dinner so that’s an awesome start to a vacation. Savings!!! The shuttle bus from our long term parking lot was a smooth ride however the funny separation here was a hilarious because we had the whole bus to ourselves.   I caught this sweet moment later at the airport ❤️  We breezed through security with our TSA PreCheck and sat at our gate awaiting the call to board and get this vacation started! The girls worked on laptops and Todd got a new Stephen King book.  Once we boarded we heard people behind us hoping quite loudly that the empty seat next to ...