The 'Maine' objective of our trip.....

6:26 am - Saturday - May 12th - Portland, ME - 37º F, 79% humidity, wind 3 mph out of the west by northwest......partly cloudy skies with a forecast high today of 54º F.  We roll our wheels in less than 2 hours......Southwest Harbor, ME here we come!

The temperature Friday morning at 7:14 am in Lynnfield, MA was 60º F....the warmest morning temperature we have had in almost one month since we left Fontana, CA.  We only had about 96 miles to go this day to Portland, ME.  We were on the road before 10 am merging on to I-95 northbound.....the traffic was light going north, but 'stop and go' going south into Boston.  

It was only a few miles to the New Hampshire state line, and then only another 15 miles before we crossed into Maine for the first time in our lives.......

.......we crossed the Maine state line within 30 minutes and by 12 pm we were exiting the turnpike just a couple miles shy of Portland, ME....there is a Cabela's at exit 42 where you can park an RV for free overnight.......

.......I-95 from Boston to the New Hampshire border is a free road, but as soon as you enter New Hampshire it becomes a toll road.....it cost us $5 to travel the short 15 miles through the lovely state of New Hampshire. Then we entered Maine where we were required to pay another $10.50 from the state line to Portland......

......we found a nice, long pull through site behind Cabela's right near their dump station, changed clothes, extracted the VW from the trailer, and then headed directly over to the Portland Head Lighthouse.  We drove surface streets to avoid paying anymore tolls this day.  With 25 minutes we arrived at the lighthouse which is located on the grounds of the former Fort Williams, and now named Fort Williams Park.......

.....the Portland Head Lighthouse was commissioned in 1790 by then President George Washington and is the oldest operating lighthouse in Maine.  It began its life with an 4th Order Fresnel lens being illuminated via whale oil, which was later replaced with a 2nd Order Fresnel lens.  In 1958 it was replaced with an Aero Beacon, and now has a DCB-224 Aero Beacon.

   

.....this rugged, rocky coastline is exactly how I imagined it would look.....

  

......on the other end of Fort Williams Park is the site of the old Goddard Mansion which stood adjacent to Cape Cottage Hotel (a summer hotel) owned by Goddard.  The hotel is no longer there, and only the native stone walls of the mansion still exist......

.....the mansion was acquired by the Army in 1896 and used to house married enlisted men on the base.

We both remarked how nice it was to be breathing sea air again after three years in which time we have spent most of our time at elevation.   Breathing all that fresh ocean air activated our appetites, so we jumped in the VW and headed into downtown Portland around 1 pm to Becky's Diner (Yelp gives them 4 stars on over 500 reviews!).  This fine little diner was featured a few years ago on Triple 'D', which was the reason we chose them for lunch........

......we both ordered a cup of coffee, and I a cup of haddock chowder followed by another lobster roll.......

.....TLE ordered their Crab Swiss Melt.....all the food was scrumptious.....just perfect for a coolish day!

We were back home by 3:30 pm relaxing and looking forward to arriving in Southwest Harbor sometime Saturday afternoon.  I was telling TLE that at the beginning of our 3,000+ mile trip to Maine I was a little anxious about such a long trip taking us so far from our familiar stomping grounds.  I always wonder what might go wrong on such a long trip....after all it is not if things will go wrong, but when.  As of Friday nothing has gone wrong after traveling 3,206 miles.....nothing except the oil temperature wire that I fixed in Oklahoma City.......

.....since we had the radiator cleaned in Albuquerque on our 3rd day out from Fontana the engine, oil and tranny temperatures have been the best they have ever been.  In that distance we have used only 3 quarts of oil, plus we have been averaging right at 7 miles per gallon.

The sun is shinning, the road beckons.......life is good!  It has been two months since we left our winter jobs at Desert View, and we are very excited about our upcoming summer adventures....stay tuned!

Thanks for stopping by!

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