Our sleep was interrupted at 5:15 when a fire alarm went off and woke up (and startled) the kids and adults alike. It only made one set of beeps, and there was clearly no fire, so our best hypothesis was that it was an unfortunately-configured weekly test time.
We were awake again a couple of hours later to eat a quick breakfast and load up the van for our next destination. We traversed Vermont and New Hampshire before stopping just inside Maine at Bob’s Clam Shack, which has been serving seafood for more than 70 years.
Noah was thrilled to do some school during the 4-hour car ride.
I really liked my lobster roll, but the other fare was more pedestrian. Amanda went with crab cakes, Noah had fried haddock, and the girls split a chicken tenders meal. I tried but didn’t like Moxie, a soft drink apparently beloved by Calvin Coolidge and more or less only bottled and sold in the northeast.
Lunch consisted of a lobster roll… and a lot of fried food.
We finished out the drive, checked into the Residence Inn in Bath, Maine, and I ordered an Uber to the Portland Airport. I was off to Iowa for three nights to attend the annual Iowa State Association of Counties conference for Neapolitan Labs.
Amanda recapped the last part of the day:
After Brian left for the airport the kids and I hung out for a bit getting settled into the hotel before driving a few miles to the Maine Maritime Museum. It was a nice museum, but the kids were largely uninterested in the exhibits explaining how ships were built in the old buildings. Eilidh was impressed with the tugboat simulator and the small ship replicas, but our stop was fairly short as all three kids cared only about one thing: getting outta there to go to the beach.
We followed the museum with a trek to Reid State Park where the kids clambered around on rocks, got wet, and soaked in the views.
Dinner was KFC via Door Dash to our hotel room. Our service was great but the food was average at best. No one was impressed that they forgot to give us our requested butter and honey for our biscuits.