sarah has the details:

I met up with Gregor in the square, went to Falafel Palace for dinner, and retrieved Tabor’s car from his driveway. Thankfully, it was not blocked in. 4 hours later, we finally arrived at the Inn. High points of the drive: my gigantic iced mocha latte at the Dunkin Donuts off Exit 57 and getting stopped by a cop on a deserted stretch of Route 26.

“You ever been pulled over before in Maine?”
“Nope. Actually, this is my first time ever getting pulled over. Thanks! It’s pretty exciting.”

Not even a lie. He didn’t give me a ticket.

I slept very soundly. That’s a lot of driving for a non-driver. We got up for breakfast, looked at the 2-week-old (very expensive) puppies, and promptly went back to sleep until 2pm. I imagine we would have slept longer, had Mark not called my cell phone.

The original plan was to go kayaking, but we didn’t leave until 15:30 so that was right out. We went to Grafton Notch State Park instead, where I learned a valuable lesson: Never agree to a hike a section of the Appalachian Trail without reading a brochure. You don’t want to be 1 hour into into it before realizing, “Hey! It says ‘steeply climbs 300m,’ no wonder I’m so tired!” We let a family from Delaware pass us just short of the summit, and I made a lot of Stephen King references.

Thank god we stopped for road pie on the way. Sweet, delicious blueberry road pie.
After the hike, we met up with our hosts and went into Bethel to eat Korean/Japanese fusion. I got the curried duck with wasabi mashed potatoes and felt very Special and Important that we were seated after closing because aforementioned hosts know the owners. The chef’s girlfriend left him and went to Florida 3 months ago, but he claims to be over it.

During dinner, I heard the Greatest News That Ever There Was, namely: They’re transitioning from a straight B&B to a spa. Can’t hardly wait.

After dinner I had an unfortunate experience trying to light a fire in the stove outside (didn’t happen), so we spent some time in the hottub instead. Boy, Maine sure does have a lot of stars.

I slept very soundly that evening.

Sunday we managed to wake up at a reasonable hour, ate breakfast, packed and made it to the kayak rental shop by 12:45. This gave us just enough time to talk to one of the owners, get the discount Mr. Host so kindly arranged, get paddles and life vests and make it onto the 13:00 shuttle. We were deposited several km up the Androscoggin River and enjoyed 4 hours of paddling.

No moose were spotted.

Then back to the Inn for a homemade dinner. Thankfully Jordan is much better at lighting fires than I am, so I did get to enjoy s’mores before the long drive home, during which we accidentally managed to stop at the exact same Dunkin Donuts we hit on the way up.

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