Camping 2006 Day 1
[Originally posted August 17, 2006]
So we’re back in Maryland now. It’s good to be home, back to civilization. The trip overall was great. Good to be away from TV and computers for awhile and spend time with family and friends. I think I’ll break up my posts so that each covers a day. Hopefully this gets me in the habit of posting every day or so.
It was decided that we would leave bright and early Monday morning. My mom suggested that Sunny and Sam stay over at her place so that we didn’t have to loop into Manhattan to pick them up. We all got up around 0300 and probably got on the road by 0400. In the pitch black morning we fired up the GPS , and headed out towards New Haven to pick up Paul. It was a really quick trip and got to New Haven around 0530 and proceeded our way up to Boston to meet up with a couple of Sam’s friends, Jae and Jae. (husband and wife, I can’t spell their actual names )
We met at the Cracker Barrel for breakfast at 0800. I had a giant breakfast of Country Fried Steak, white gravy, eggs, biscuts, and grits, plus enough coffee to drown a horse. I got to sleep in the back on our way out and swapped halfway through at our next gas stop. We borrowed my dad’s 1992 Toyota Land Cruiser . We got an amazing 12 MPG out of it. We got to the KOA around 1430, checked in, pitched our tent and made cheesesteaks for lunch. The mosquitos were brutal and the bug spray didn’t seem to help out at all. Within 20 minutes I had a dozen bites on my legs, and Sam had this giant bite on his forehead.
Around 1600 we headed out to the park to pay our fees (only $20 per vehicle!) and just survey the area. We wanted to climb a trail up Cadillac Mountain, but about 50 meters in I smashed my head on a rock and we decided it was too dangerous, given how dark it was about to become. Besides, Sarah’s steel toe boots were not workinig real well for her. We walked an easy trail for another hour and then headed out to find an LLBean outlet store we had seen on our way through Ellsworth. We lucked upon a pair of boots which fit Sarah well. We even got a great recommendation to a nice lobster house for the night. What we weren’t ready for was that everything closes by 2100 in the area, so with only 10 minutes to spare we raced over for dinner at Union River Lobster Pot . The meal was indeed satisfying, we all had lobster, and mussels, clams, and New England Clam Chowder. They had a 4.5 pound lobster in the tank, and one of the wranglers even “hypnotized” it for us.
We made our way back to camp and settled in for the night. At that point we had been up for quite awhile A few of us took showers in the remarkably clean shower facility in the center of camp, soothing our sore bodies and relieving some of the itching. We had made a quick stop by the Walmart on our way back and picked up some citronella candles, but it just seemd that the mosquitoes for the rest of the trip were just not nearly as bad.
I’ll have pictures up soon. I’ve just been really busy catching up at work. Good to be back!