Checkout day, for real this time. No one was in a hurry to get moving. Eventually though, I headed down to get a few breakfast bags. This is the answer to free breakfast right now. A paper bag with a fun sticker, filled with a bottled water, piece of fruit (orange for all of us that day), a Nutrigrain bar, flavoring for the bottle of water (Arnold Palmer...blech), and a carb treat. 3 of us got blueberry muffins. Kim lucked out with coffee cake. And this Hampton Inn doesn’t cheap out on water. The good old New England favorite, Poland Springs was the bottle of water. Phew!
I was pretty content with my breakfast bag, but Nick’s favorite part of vacation is going out for breakfast, and obviously, we hadn’t done much of that. So he was put in charge of finding a breakfast spot for the 2 of us.
We ended up at The Galley, which was clearly a local hangout. The single waitress clearly knew most of her customers. Nick got some ridiculously large plate of meat, eggs, pancakes, etc. I got an amazing pineapple muffin (grilled) and an egg. It was all delicious, and it was very inexpensive.
Once we were done with breakfast we met back up with Kim and John. We walked the main street (Front Street?), visiting a few stores, and then we walked part-way across the (large) bridge that crosses the Penobscot River, so that John could point out the ship in the shipyard that he’s been working on camera systems for.
After we returned to ground level, we parted ways and headed for the car. It was time to get on the road. We hoped to stop in Freeport at our favorite whoopie pie store (Wicked Whoopies...go there when you’re in Freeport; it’s way more exciting than LL Bean!). However, the first several miles of our drive were pretty eventful. We passed a wild accident scene where a Rav-4’s back wheel had landed on the hood of a Hyundai Elantra (word from the Brunswick PD facebook page is there were no serious injuries). Shortly after, the sky opened up, and the monsoon was on-going through Freeport, so no whoopie pies this trip.
Thankfully, the rest of our drive was mostly uneventful, and we got home about 2:30, where we unpacked the car and then picked up the dogs from the pet resort. It must have been an ok stay for them, because Gizmo only gave me the silent treatment for about 12 hours. Our record is a week.
Final thoughts:
The trip ended up being less unconventional than I had expected. And it was thoroughly enjoyable. It felt so good to get a change of scenery.
I’m super impressed with Hampton Inn’s response to the pandemic. Even Kim felt very comfortable there.
This will not be our last visit to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.
Even after 4 nights sharing essentially oversized hotel rooms, I still like my in-laws.
Nick and his parents all thought the Sheepscot Resort was weird and wouldn’t book there again. I’ve stayed at far worse RCI resorts, and I didn’t find any major faults with it. And quite frankly, I loved the view and location.
The rest areas on 95 in Maine are taking social distancing seriously. Only about ⅓ of the bathroom stalls are open for use, half the sinks are closed, and you can only use hand dryers away from the sinks, not the ones at the sinks.
Online booking beats over the phone booking…
Sunglasses fog with a mask. A good hat with the mask is a much better option for keeping sun out of your face when touristing with a mask.
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