About 3,600 miles after leaving Portland, we arrived in Portland. If you don't know the story of the "Portland Penny," a coin toss between Asa Lovejoy (of Boston, Massachusetts) and Francis Pettygrove (of Portland, Maine) gave the win to Pettygrove and his hometown's name to Stumptown.
We left Acadia after a lovely long weekend. My final act was to jump into the frigid Atlantic Ocean. On our way out of town, Lily and Henry received their first patch/badge from the National Park Junior Ranger Program. They worked hard for it during our driving tour of the park yesterday and they were very proud to get their just reward.
Then down the coast we drove, first to Camden for lunch. I don't know when or where Camden entered our imagination but for as long as I can remember, Camden has personified the Maine of Elise's fantasy. When she dreams of perpetual sweater weather, it's in Camden. When she considers a daily Lobster habit, it's in Camden.
I got a hot tip on RV parking by calling a local hotel and we easily found a nice lunch spot overlooking the harbor nearby. We found stickers and other goodies in a tourist shop down the block. We took a picture of a memorial to local soliders who fought in the Civil War, including Josh Chamberlain, who I am pretty sure was dramatized in the film, Gettysburg. (It will be neat to follow up on that when we visit the battlefields at Gettysburg in about a week.) We shopped for more tchotchkes.
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| Camden, Maine Civil War Memorial |
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| Elise's lobster roll |
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| Henry's picture of the waterfall near the Camden harbor |
We drove on to Freeport, arriving around 4:30 and again found RV parking based on some solid intel. Our objective was highly-packable puffy coats for the journeys ahead and we succeeded. We found more stickers (a theme), much-needed swimsuits for Ali and Cate, and a water bottle upgrade for me. And we snapped some quality pictures.
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| The kids at the Bean |
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| Me and Lily with Lily's picture of me |
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| Henry was impressed by the array of lures for sale at The Bean |
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| Chalk footprints |
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| Henry is determined to have this as his backpack for school when we return. |
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| This is a three-hammock contraption on display outside The Bean |
Then we drove on to Portland, a short distance, to check this symbolic box on our life list. RV parking was not so smooth but we prevailed, bought souvenirs and ate at a mediocre waterfront pizza joint. The kids ate because we put a favorite show on my phone and they didn't notice what they were doing. Hey, a meal without any complaining: WIN!
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| Our picture from Portland |
About an hour later, we "leveled up" in our reserved site at a campground on the Maine coast, very close to New Hampshire. We can't tell in the dark right now but the roaring Atlantic is about 100 feet away. I'm looking forward to tomorrow.
We also made it all the way through book four of the 39 Clues series. I love the way the kids are absorbed by these stories. I've used the word "insidious" to describe the way these books incorporate world geography, history, literature, music and art history and more into the junior edition of DaVinci Code. I've said it before (two paragraphs above) and I'll say it again: no complaining = WIN!
In addition to all the moving, shopping and eating, we got some school done. Ali and Cate are using two online platforms right now, IXL for math and Explode the Code for "literary arts." Henry is loving his math, a curriculum called Beast Academy, which he is doing in books for now and online later (maybe). And, for the first time, Lily got online with her platform, Edgenuity, did her orientation videos and completed her first few assignments in math, English and social studies. We're not moving at all tomorrow and we're hoping to continue to build some good habits around these platforms.
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