Hi-ho-Hi-ho Off To Maine We Go

Sarge is packing up the minivan and driving us all up to Maine for a lovely fall family vacation. Yay.

In truth I am looking forward to going to Maine. It's beautiful, it's clean, the people are friendly, but holy crap is it far away. We don't go by plane, or bus, or train, we drive. All 15 hours, straight. People think that we are crazy, but we figure by the time that we have driven 10 hours, we're almost there so we may as well go the rest of the way. After making this trip at least 8 times in the past 5 years, we've finally invested in an EZPass and some audio books.

Maine is awesome. As I have said before it's beautiful, clean, and friendly. Sarge is from a town up north, or Downeast, or whatever the hell they say, called Ellsworth. It's between Bangor, and Bar Harbor, so it gets a lot of traffic during the summer. It's rather small, and the kind of "New Englandly" type place that you might imagine from a Stephen King novel. Sarge cant go to the Shop N' Save without running into some of the same guys he worked with 14 years ago. There are lobster pounds, blueberry patches, Church dinners, and a main street called "Main Street".

Every time we go there, it's drive through the town, point out the new traffic lights, drive by the "old" house, stop at his mom's office, stop at his dad's store, eat lunch at China Hill, stop at Marden's and Reny's, get my ring checked at Pyramid Studios. Take the Piko and the dog down to the shore to collect shells, and wade in the icy cold Atlantic. That is pretty much our vacation every time we go.

HOWEVER all this fun is interspersed with visits by family, to family, old friends, people we don't know. It's like my worst nightmare. People. People I have to make polite inane conversation with. "How's the weather been?", "Had a nice summer?", "The leaves are turning quite nicely this year", "Looks like you're headed for a cold winter". "Did you hear that 'So-And-So's' Son 'What's-His-Name' got arrested? I tell you it's the drugs". All this while Sarge and his dad escape to the garage for a beer and a smoke.

Gods I hope that they have opened a Starbucks.