Rhode Island

Our last day may very well have been our favorite. Ironic, as our trip was planned for us to see Maine and autumn leaf colors, and our day in Rhode Island was a just a whim tacked on at the end! Thanks to Jessica and Sara who recommended a day in Newport, RI, and my dear old friend Erin for living there! Erin was my camp counselor when I was in 6th grade and we have kept in touch. As she is soon moving to The Philippines with her military husband, it was so great to have dinner with them and meet their adorable son.

And yes, I loved visiting three New England cities named Portland, Salem, and Newport, which are also all cities in Oregon where I grew up! 

We loved our drive out to Rhode Island, as we started in New Hampshire, drove through Massachusetts, and arrived in Rhode Island. And I, Oregon native, and Andy, Illinois native, liked that we could drive across the entire state of Rhode Island in the time it would take either one of us to drive from our childhood homes to a major city in our home states!

Rhode Island is beautiful and touristy, as it was and is a destination for the wealthy to escape hot, dirty cities in the summer. It was particulary popular with Gilded Age billionaires, so we had some mansions to see! We first stopped at the Green Animals Topiary Garden:

We saw lovely harbors, bridges, coastline, gardens, and brick buildings. We headed into town to see the Newport Mansions, the streets lined with ornate gates, giant trees, and mansions that boggle the mind. There are many to tour and all are unique, but as we only had time for one (the lines were loooong that day), we opted for the most famous, The Breakers. It is the “summer cottage” of the Vanderbilt family, and used in the filming of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book The Great Gatsby (taught that one too!) starring Robert Redford back when he was young and actually good looking (I stood where he stood in the kitchen!!! Ooooh). You can’t take pictures inside because instead, you can buy many overpriced coffee table books, postcards, and DVDs at the souvenir shop! If you want to see the interior, click on The Breakers link above, or check out a copy of The History Channel’s America’s Castles from your library. They will let you take pictures looking out from the portico:

And from the grand entry in the front:

And the grand lawn in the back:

It was so fun and interesting and just amazing! The interior was built in France, deconstructed, and shipped to the U.S.! The size and wealth was breathtaking, and my favorite part was the bathtub carved from a single slab of marble. Andy loved the kitchens (yes, kitchens plural) with their separate rooms for flower arranging, baking, cooking, dishwashing, dish storage, silver polishing…

We had a great trip and hope to tour more mansions some other time when we are out there.

Salem

Having never been in New Hampshire before, we enjoyed the local sights and I picked up yet another spoon for my collection (and yes, that adds to my grandma street cred, collecting souvenir spoons and vacationing in New England to see the fall colors). Our hotel was a hoot, as it was connected to a minor league baseball park, which means you could watch a game from your window. It wasn’t baseball season, but it was still awesome (and randomly super warm the day we took these pictures!).

Room with a view:

We had about a day and a half to do… something. We had debated returning to Vermont where we spent our honeymoon (mmm, cider donuts!), spending the day in Boston, hiking around to covered bridges in New Hampshire, or doing serious sightseeing. After such a relaxed week in Maine, I was eager for serious sightseeing! I was so excited, because Andy had agreed to spend the evening with me in Salem, Massachusetts! It was near Halloween and therefore extra spooky! And, being an American history and literature student/teacher, I wanted to pay my respects to both Nathaniel Hawthorne and the victims of the infamous 1692 witchcraft trials (I did teach Arthur Miller’s The Crucible for three years!).

Again, we loved that we stayed in New Hampshire but drove past Boston to Salem, Massachusetts in like an hour and a half!

I spotted this sign right after we parked. Love it!

This was in the crosswalk:

We did the classic wax museum tour, and a few other sights, but both of us felt uncomfortable that the town had become such a tourist destination over such a tragedy in American history. I mean, a Frankenstein horror house? Really, people?

We almost did the haunted candlelight tour, but decided there were too many screaming teenagers and instead did our own little tour, complete with a stop for hot cider and kettle corn. We saw historic homes, Revoluntionary sites, and a cemetary where Pilgrims were buried.

We saw the ship that is the highlight of the Maritime Museum and walked the harbor area:

I was excited to see the original Customs House, which once employed author Nathaniel Hawthorne. For those who need a quick review, Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables, among other things. One of his ancestors was a judge at the Salem Witchcraft Trials, and Nathaniel was so ashamed of this history that he added the “w” to his last name to remove himself from the association. Excitingly, the House of Seven Gables still stands, right near the home where Hawthorne was born. It was a popular destination, especially since the publication of The Lace Reader  brought the house back into popular conversation. We took a tour, which was fun, interesting, and an eensy bit spooky! I love this picture Andy took, as it captures the dark spookiness of it all!

Maine Trip #3

We finished up our time in the Camden area with a random trip up to Bangor (for Jessica and Sara: “Bangor! I don’t even know her!”) to eat at UNOs, another one of our favorite restaurants that does not exist in Washington (the pizza is just okay, it’s all about the giant peanut butter cup dessert). We also just wanted to go waaay north, and it definitely felt cold and remote up there. Andy and I often got the sense in Maine of just how far northeast we were and how remote the little towns feel, even though really, D.C., Boston, and New York are within a day’s drive.

We also went to Rockland to view their lighthouse. No trip to Maine is complete without lighthouse viewing! This one was unique, as you have to walk the long (7/8ths of a mile), uneven breakwater to get to it.

We bid farewell to the brilliant colors and headed back to New Hampshire, to stay at the same hotel in Manchester (mmmm… room service) and see some other sights.

Maine Trip #2

Andy and I started our Tuesday with a walk into downtown Camden, which is a classic New England port town.

We spotted a lovely little park:

And enjoyed Camden Harbor:

We walked along the beach (not exactly a tropical romantic beach here, more of the brisk cold, wipe your runny nose kind of beach!):

We took a long walk in the nearby countryside to see their famous Belted Galloway cows (remnants from a previous exotic animal farm that had closed down):

I, of course, wanted to check out their small, historic library. This is the park adjoining the library. I want this view from my library!!!!

We ate at a lot of local spots and ate our fill of lobster for a very long time! We also picked up items at the grocery store and had in- room meals thanks to our minifridge and microwave. The breakfasts at the Inn were large and yummy, so we were usually full until well after lunchtime! The one non-lobster food on our to do list was popovers on the lawn at the Jordan Pond House in Acadia National Park– thanks for the recommendation, Cousin Jeanine!

We did so much driving that week! Again, grateful for Brigit, podcasts, and our sunroof! It was nice, however, to have a leisurely vacation and to have so much time to idly chat with Andy.

Midweek, we drove up to Acadia National Park, which is geographically and botanically the total opposite of Olympic National Park. We had our popovers and lemonaide, and then set out to take tons of pictures! Here are the highlights:

Our view from the Jordan Pond House:

Post-popover:

Andy’s favorite picture from the day:

My favorite picture from the day:

Acadia is a large, oddly shaped, and somewhat disconnected park with spots of non-park towns and areas. Therefore, a lot of driving! We headed out to the coast, which was so fun for me to see, as it was so different than the Pacific coastline.

On our drive back to the other side of the park, we stopped in some little, non-park towns. I had spotted this sweet little bridge next to a historical society and knew we need to take pictures! They remind me of the theme picture we have across the top of our blog.

We THEN (told you! big day and lots of driving!) drove the very steep road full of 180 degree switchbacks to the top of Cadillac Mountain and had a lot of fun climbing rocks, even though it was cold and windy (I used a lot of pocket kleenex packs that week!).

By then we had driven nearly all of the 20 mile Park Loop Road, some parts several times, and we were exhausted! We ended our trip with a stop in Bar Harbor (which is amusing to hear Bostonians say), a popular wealthy vacation spot that used to have Gilded Age mansions from the likes of the Rockefellers before a huge fire wiped them all out. The town itself is very cute with plenty of shops and restaurants. I gravitated towards a lovely tea shop and Andy, of course, spotted the fudge and ice cream shop.

Maine Trip #1

At last, I am sitting down with a cup of coffee, a house free of holiday decorations, and snow outside, so I will post about our long ago trip to New England before Jessica M (friend and beloved housesitter) disowns us.

Andy and I love autumn, with the colors, the food, and that amazing feeling in the air of crisp cold and wood smoke. Our love of all things autumn is in fact the sole reason we got married in the month of September, so we could do reds and golds for wedding colors. Seriously. We are a fall family. We have talked before about taking a trip to New England to see the falls colors and explore a part of the country we had seen very little of. So, like two retired people, we took ourselves to Maine to take in “the colors”. Because, Heaven forbid we be normal 20 somethings who take exotic trips to tropical islands. We prefer being 40 years younger than everyone else on our vacations, thank you very much.

We left The Goobs in the capable, well-licked hands of our friends and housesitters Jessica and Sara, and bless them for their capability in all situations. The City had put in a sidewalk across the street and rather than deliver a giant pallet of paving bricks to the people across the street who needed them, Home Depot delivered it to our driveway while we were away. I spent the 2 weeks after our return talking to a lot of people who work for The City and Home Depot, and eventually the neighbors who actually were wondering where their bricks were. Siiiiigh.

Andy and I had spent the weekend before we left attending the Pacific Northwest Ballet (we have season tickets this year), which is a very lovely, cultured event, and seeing the Mythbusters, which is a very lovely, explosion- and fart-filled event. Awesome.

We spent the whole day flying from one end of the country to the other, amused that we had recently been at Cape Flattery, which is nearly as northwest as you can get in the U.S. and we were now headed to Maine, which is nearly as northeast as you can get. We felt cool. It was a long day of flying, but our layover was in D.C. and it was right before the election, so the aiport was awash in politics. We ate yummy sandwiches (they have great airport food!) and played “Spot the wannabe Kennedy”. We saw a tan guy in khaki shorts, polo shirt, sweater tied over his shoulders, and loafers with no socks. Bingo!!!!

We arrived in New Hampshire, which is weird for us, as we are both from parts of the country with large states, and it was odd to be able to drive from state to state in a matter of hours! We were excited to get a rental car with a sun roof, as we were planning on doing a lot of sightseeing driving. Thank goodness for Andy’s GPS (whom we’ve named Brigit) and Car Talk podcasts.

We stayed that night in Manchester, NH, at a nice Hilton near the convention center. Unbeknownst to us, The Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey circus was just leaving town via circus train. I didn’t know we still had circus trains! Sweet! Even better, our hotel was next to the train depot and we stood there and watched the elephants march up the street, trunk holding tail, with a police escort, to load the train cars. I about DIED, as it was one of the best serendipitous moments of our lives! We tried to take pictures, but it was too dark. Sorry!

We woke up Monday eager to drive to Maine and see the colors and white church steeples we had seen from our airplane. We began our day, wisely, with a trip to Dunkin’ Donuts, as these glimpses of heaven do not yet have stores open in Washington. Our first stop in Maine was Old Orchard Beach, a spot famous for its beach front pier and carnival. It was like seeing a movie set! It was already closed for the season and Andy was bummed, but I was elated, as I loved the slightly abandoned feel of it all. Plus, I finally stuck my Pacific Ocean-raised feet in the Atlantic Ocean!

So did Andy!

Under the pier:

Andy is the photographer in our little family, so I was excited that I grabbed a least one artistic shot!

Andy’s handiwork:

We next stopped by Portland, ME, which I found funny, having grown up near Portland, OR. The Old Port area was great, with restaurants, shops, and that lovely, salty feel of the waterfront (plus original brick streets nearly 200 years old). We found a pet store that sold Goobers’ now-famous hotdog costume, and picked up some other New England treats. We had lunch at a place called Andy’s, because how could we not? I had a pumpkin ale on a whim and loved it so much I bought more when I got home! We each had lobster bisque (yum!) and lobster rolls, the famous quick lunch of fisherman. We were pretty underwhelmed and were glad to check lobster rolls off of our New England to do list.

We arrived in Camden, where we stayed at the lovely Captain Swift Inn. You can learn more about it at their website. We enjoyed getting to know the innkeepers and their sweet dog, and loved our room with the big tub, gas fireplace, and extra living room loft!

2nd anniversary

Yay! Andy and I have been married for 2 years. And since this is our blog about ourselves, I’ve  narcissistically posted pictures of us at our wedding.

(above photos courtesy of Studio 6 Photography)

Honeymoon in Vermont:

(these cider donuts were amazing– we still talk about them!)

(at the Von Trapp Family Lodge, where alas, the hills were not alive with the sound of music)

(hot air balloon ride)

(view from the balloon)