July - Part Three

My goodness! July was filled with so many huge adventures! The rest of the month was slower, but still so fun!

After NYC, we headed further North! The drive on the first day was wild. We woke up in Connecticut, worked from a coffee shop in Massachusetts, drove over a bridge for a quick drive around New Hampshire, and slept in Vermont. While driving to our sleeping spot in Vermont, we noticed the bridge connecting Vermont and New Hampshire. We had a few minutes to kill, so we decided driving over to NH sounded like a great plan! Before being up North, I had no idea how often we’d be driving along and just end up in another state! I also didn’t realize how you could drive through so many states in one day. We also stopped by a gas station with a squeegee. After beach hopping, we decided we needed to clean our solar panels to get the salt off and help them charge better. It worked great! Just hanging out on the roof of the van in a tiny town at a tiny gas station. We may have gotten some looks!

The next day, we did an activity I had been looking forward to for a while. We went on a tour of the Ben and Jerry’s Factory! The tour showed the facilities and even ended with a large sample! T and I both love seeing how things are made, so we were in heaven! After the tour, we headed out to the ice cream flavor cemetery. We loved reading all the plagues. Each retired ice cream flavor in the cemetery had a funny poem about its time as a flavor and extinction. They also had the years that the flavors were active. We loved our visit!

That evening, we headed to Stowe, Vermont. We were only in the area for the day, but we wanted to still stop-in. Stowe is such a cute little town!! We walked around town and took in the sites.

Stowe, Vermont

After Stowe, we headed to Littleton, New Hampshire to explore. Littleton is gorgeous!! The river was beautiful! We headed down to the water to dip our toes in. We caught the most beautiful sunset. While watching the sunset, we decided it was the perfect time to call our Joey to catch up! Although the huge adventures are so fun, the quiet, calm nights are some of my favorite!

We rented a spot at a Hipcamp for the weekend. Hipcamp is an app like Airbnb for camping spots! We have some great luck at Hipcamps. This one was in Jefferson, New Hampshire which was close to our weekend hike in White Mountain National Forest. The spot was on the land of this nice couple. They were so kind! They’d cleared a huge field on their property. There were around 8 camping spots spread out. Each one had a picnic table and a fire pit-everything we needed! There was also an outhouse and shower which we were thankful for! T made a campfire feast of a rice bowl. Complete with fried spam and veggies. It was delicious! We spent the night by the fire. After a wild weekend in the city, we were ready to relax by the fire!

To start our Saturday, T made breakfast empanadas! SO good! Our first stop was the entrance to one of the peaks of the White Mountains. When we arrived, they told us we would be fine to drive up the mountain, but we would not be able to make it back down, so they wouldn’t let us in. We had to quickly regroup. We put a different trailhead into our GPS and it took us to the wrong location, which was a bummer until we looked around and saw we were in a field of flowers. I jumped out of the car and picked a handful. It was worth the detour for sure! Finally, we found the perfect trailhead! It was a long trail with waterfalls. We had the best day hiking seven miles! We stopped at one spot and I put my toes in the water. FREEZING! I did not expect the water to be so cold in July, but I guess that is how water is year round in New Hampshire! I only had my toes in the water for maybe thirty seconds! We were sweating hard, so I thought it would be refreshing, but instead it was just painful! We still loved taking a break by the water. A gorgeous day!

After our hike, we took ice cold showers before spending the evening by the fire with our feet propped up. On the docket for dinner was steak, mac&cheese, and brussel sprouts. YUM! I am thankful every day that I married a chef! I make a mean peanut butter cracker, but so far- I have caught the stove on fire three out of the four times I have cooked in the van. So I don’t use the stove anymore :)

Maine

After a restful night of sleep, we headed to MAINE! We spent our first day in Maine paddle boarding at Maranacooke Lake. SO fun! The wind was wild as a storm was brewing! We didn’t have to paddle much on the way out as the wind was moving us. We had to work hard to get back to the launch point. It was worth it! After paddle boarding, we topped the evening off with some ice cream from Tubby’s Ice Cream! SO good once again! They didn’t have many flavors, so I went for chocolate with rainbow sprinkles!

On Monday, we were running low on power because it had been cloudy for a couple days. We found an app that had locations for outlets. We went to a park and found an outlet to plug into. As we were packing up, the cops showed up to kick us out. We were already planning to leave town, so we assured him we wouldn’t do it again and left. Oops!

We ended spending the evening in Augusta, Maine. It was a cute little spot. While walking around the river, we got stuck in a big rain storm! The run back was a little wet, but we made it!

We spent Tuesday in Bangor! We were excited for Bangor! It was a cute little area, but a little sketchy. We went to Walmart to settle in for the evening. We don’t usually ask the Walmart if we can stay the night, we just trust the reviews we see on the app. Most of the time, others have recently asked and confirmed it is okay. We just happened to walk in and ask the manager if we could stay the night, she said we could, but she wouldn’t because Bangor is super unsafe. After a few minutes back in the van, we decided to move onto the next city to sleep. We had felt unsafe earlier in the day, and the managers comments made us even more uneasy. It was an hourish to Ellsworth, Maine. The spot we were planning to stay for the weekend. When we pulled in, there were approximately 30 other RVs/vans/trucks. We felt right at home! This is the closest Walmart to Bar Harbor/Acadia National Park, so it stays very populated.

On Wednesday night, we headed to Bar Harbor! Bar Harbor was a location we were SO excited about!!! We could not wait! It is the absolute cutest town!! They offer RV parking just down the street from town. We have no problem walking long distances, so it was perfect for us! We stopped by the Chocolate Emporium for some ice cream. There was a large range of flavors and the ice cream is made fresh daily. It sounded hopeful! T loved his ice cream! It did not pass the SK stamp of approval, unfortunately. I did not enjoy it, but the view while we ate the ice cream was great! Bar Harbor was packed with the summer crowd and the town was buzzing! So fun!

The best part of the whole evening happened right at the water!! We went for a walk to get a better view of the sunset when we saw a sweet, precious golden playing in the water! We talked to her mama for a little while and learned lots about the sweet puppy. Her name was Maggie. She lives in Bar Harbor full time! Every time they go for a walk, she carries her lovey all the way to the harbor from her house. Then she promptly drops her lovey on the ground and is only focused on chasing rocks. Her mom throws rocks, Maggie chases after them, doesn’t catch them, runs back for her mom to throw another. Over and over and over! When her mama stops throwing rocks, Maggie comes up and barks at her to throw more. When her mama said “all done Mags” and started to leave, Maggie waited around to see if anyone else would throw some rocks. When Maggie was finally ready to leave, she ran over, picked up her lovey and pranced home. It was a literal dream night! She’s nine but still has fun puppy energy when at the water. SO sweet! While we were watching Maggie, another little golden baby came up! His name was Ollie. He was only one year old. He was too cute! Maggie and Ollie played together for a while and it was the best! Puppy dogs are really the best things to ever grace the planet!

Sweet, precious Maggie Girl! <3

On Thursday night, T and I went on a date! We got all fancied up for our reservations at a restaurant right at the water. We arrived at Bar Harbor a little early, so we decided to stop in for a drink at CherrySTONES. After a few minutes, we noticed the restaurant started getting super busy. We received a phone call saying the restaurant we originally had a reservation for was out of power and so were all of the restaurants on that end of the town. We decided to quickly put in our order at CherrySTONES! It worked out great! The food was delicious and T finally got his lobster!

After work the next day, we headed to our camping spot in Acadia National Park! We were STOKED for Acadia! It was our first National Park since living in the van. The first thing we did was purchase our America the Beautiful pass which gets us into all National Parks for free for the year! Before we started making dinner, T taught me how to properly build a fire! He guided me step by step on building my first one alone! I still hate fire, but it was fun! We decided for dinner we would make a Chicago style pizza over the fire, it was delicious!! That evening, we took the trail at the campground that led down to the ocean. It really just led to a cliff. We sat there for a little while before I got too freaked out being that close to the ocean at night with little visibility! Although the cliff freaked me out, we loved seeing the stars. It was the darkest night I had ever seen and the stars were BRIGHT! We decided to mosey to the amphitheater at the campground to do some more stargazing. This was one of the best nights of my life! I could not even register the beauty I was seeing! T and I saw FOURTEEN shooting stars while we laid there! It was a beautiful moment and one of my favorites I have shared with TC. We felt so incredibly blessed!

We went back down the ocean trail the next morning and realized it wasn’t as huge of a drop as it appeared. It was a beautiful spot! We spent the day hiking Dorr Mountain! It was one of the hardest hikes I have done! There were parts that were a tight squeeze between rocks and spots where you had to climb up the side of the rock on a ladder. Whew! It was a doozie, but we had the best time! After getting to the top of Dorr Mountain, we looked across and could see the top of Cadillac Mountain. We looked on the trail app and realized we could hike there from where we were currently standing. We decided to go for it! It was a super hard hike, but we were up for the challenge! A lot of people ride a bus or drive to the top of Cadillac Mountain. We had discussed driving after our hike, but decided to push ourselves and hike it instead. So fun! We shared a whoopie pie-a Maine delicacy- at the top of Cadillac Mountain. It was delicious! After making it back to our car, we headed to Bar Harbor for some post-hike wings at Leary’s Landing Irish Pub. YUM! We spent the rest of the evening making dinner and sitting by the fire resting our feet. We capped the night off with a smore!

Views from the Ocean Trail

On Sunday, we headed to Jordan Pond to explore. We stopped in to the Jordan Pond House for a popover-another Maine delicacy. We didn’t love them. Ha! They removed the best part of a piece of bread, the center. Either way, it was a fun way to spend the morning We were glad we tried them, and the view was beautiful! After the hike on Saturday, we decided to spend Sunday doing the scenic driving route in Acadia instead of the hiking route. Before we went to Maine, our dear friend Molly told us that we had to stop by Little Hunters Beach! It’s a rocky beach and when the waves hit the rocks, it makes the coolest sound! The beach is hidden from the road, so it took us a few minutes to find, but we finally did and it was worth it! The rocks were gorgeous! We got in the water for a couple minutes, but not long because it was freezing! We spent some time sitting on the rocks looking out over the beach. It was a beautiful, restful afternoon! There was one more food we needed to try before leaving Maine, so we ended the day with a visit to Bar Harbor Lobster Co. for lobster rolls! Delicious!! We shared the platter which gave us four different types of many lobster rolls. They were phenomenal! After lobster rolls, we stopped by another ice cream shop that was suggested to us- Udder Heaven! It passed the SK test and made up for the not as good ice cream earlier in the week!

We spent the start of the next week exploring Freeport, Maine. We went to the L.L. Bean store. It was huge! I was lost most of the time we were in the store. We loved having the town to walk around to get our steps instead of a Walmart parking lot. There was a parking lot for overnight vans/RVs which was great. We felt welcome in Freeport! On Tuesday, we headed to Portland, Maine which was also a great hidden gem! We spent some time playing Frisbee at a cool park right at the water. The sunset was phenomenal and we found a great bench to sit and watch! Wow!

After work on Wednesday, we decided to explore the city! We had some chicken wings at Crispy Gai. T read about this spot online, so we were excited to try it! Amazing chicken wings!! SO good. One of our favorite things to do in a new city is to go to one restaurant for an appetizer and then another restaurant for a main course. It allows us to try several restaurants in one trip! We split an order of wings as an appetizer. While there, we met two girls sitting beside us at the bar. I could tell they were local, so I asked them where they would suggest for us to go next. They suggested a rooftop bar- perfect! The Luna Bar served up a beautiful sunset and delicious food! It was a great end to our time in Maine! Next stop, Boston and Jamaica!