Schoodic Peninsula

We had some business to take care of yesterday morning. It's pretty inconvenient when life's business intrudes into one's travel plans, but that's the way it goes sometimes. Mike's truck was whining about needing its oil changed "soon," and so we did that. While we were waiting for that, I took the opportunity to walk to a nearby Walgreen's to pick up some personal care items. Pretty boring stuff. Finally (and the truck took seemingly forever), we were able to make our way out to the Schoodic Peninsula. Along the way, we stopped in at a local quilt shop, and I'll tell you about that in a separate post.

Having spent so the morning on all of that, it was time for lunch by then, and so we stopped at a local restaurant. It's always fun to stop in where the food and the people are local, and we chose wisely for our lunch. We were looking for a good bowl of clam chowder, and "The Galley" looked promising.

It was a family-owned restaurant. Daughter was doing the serving, while mom was doing the cooking. Their restroom signs were so cute.

Just because we went there looking for clam chowder didn't mean we actually ordered it. Instead, we each had a lobster roll. So far, we've had lobster every day since arriving in Maine. It is delicious, cheap, and served up like fast food here.

Also...sweet potato fries. These were particularly delicious.

As we drove out to the peninsula, we saw lots of fall color. It's amazing what a difference a few days can make.

When we reached the peninsula, we pulled off at one of the first turnouts. There, we had another view of the Egg Island Light Station we saw the day before.

Around every turn were stunning views. Looking to the right at this turnout, this is what we saw.

Looking to the left, this is what we saw.

Here's a panorama of this particular inlet.

And here's another just a little ways down the road.

When we reached Schoodic Point, it was among the loveliest places I've ever seen. There were quite a few people there, but not the crowds we'd faced in the park the day before. There were a lot of painters present as well.

The weather was perfect. With so many large granite boulders, it was a nice place to sit and take in the view.

Our shadow selves came along on this trip. It's the first really sunny day we've seen in a while, and they were all over it.

Even our faces came along, squinting in the bright sunlight.

Our tour book tells us that Schoodic Point is marked by massive granite rocks that are laced by black diabase dikes, the product of magma that welled up into cracks. Here's a good example of that.

Here's another. It was easy to see here how the magma had forced the rock surfaces up and away from one another.

The scratch marks were caused by glaciers that smoothed and polished these rocks.

It was possible to walk right to the water's edge. Looking back, this is what we saw.

We soaked up the sun for about an hour, and then headed back. Along the way, we paused to take a picture of this marina. We also saw a lot of lobster traps along the way, piled up in people's yards.

And we saw lots of fall color. I took dozens of pictures, and I'll show you a few.

As I took the pictures off my camera and phone, I came across a few images I shared on Facebook, but not here on the blog, and so I'm including them here. This one below was taken in New Hampshire as we drove by. It's someone's home, but I was looking at the colorful trees.

And since some of y'all get weird, nervous, and thirsty when I don't include pictures of the kitties, I'm including these. Here, Smitty is claiming Mike's lap yesterday morning before we left for the day.

Sadie rarely yields on lap time, but she gave Smitty a chance by taking her morning nap in the chair.

Also, this is the best part of any driving day. We stop for lunch, and then Mike has his nap. While he's napping, the kitties and I sit in the back of the trailer with a quilt. That's when I work on my embroidery. When Mike gets up, we have a cup of espresso and a bite of chocolate, and then we move along.

As you can see, Sadie is completely stressed out. Not.

So we'll be moving along today, and we *really* need to be moving along. Things are shutting down here in Maine, and we suspect most places in New England. Columbus Day seems to be the end of the season. We had hoped to visit Boothbay Harbor on our way south, but couldn't find a place to stay. The RV park we'd hoped for shuts down for the season tomorrow. So, that was kind of a rude awakening. Instead, we're going to spend two nights at a park in Kennebunkport. You might recall that it was the summer home of President George H.W. Bush. There is a wildlife refuge there, and we might take that in on a day of sight-seeing. Mainly, we just want to see the town. It sounds charming.

From there, we're heading to a state park near the water at the tip of Rhode Island. Thanks go to my friend, Debbie, for putting us onto this park. It will be our first visit to Rhode Island, and we'll be driving through Massachusetts and Connecticut to get there...at least three new states for the side of the RV. We've been to Massachusetts on a previous trip, and so we won't spend much time there. Rhode Island and Connecticut will be new to us both. Possibly I visited there as a child with my family, but I don't remember anything about either state.

We're slowing down a little bit for the next few days, but don't let that fool you. After Rhode Island, it's New York City...a little overwhelming to think about, but we're getting a handle on it by consulting all of our resources. We spent several hours looking at everything from RV parks to bus tours to walking tours to ferry schedules last night. By the time we were finished, we'd decided on a few things, but our trip to the Big Apple is far from nailed down. More on that as we make some decisions.