A Rainy Day

Maine – Wednesday, Oct. 3

After a good night at the campground, I was almost packed up when it started to rain. I can finish up packing in the back in the rain though, because with the back hatch of the van open, I’m protected from the rain – it’s like a little awning. It looked pretty gray, like it was going to continue for a while, so I decided to do a food pantry donation today, because it takes some time to figure out which organization I’m going to donate the food to, and then I call them to see what they need, and then I have to find a store to shop at, and then find the food pantry. I was hoping by the time I was done with all that, the rain would be letting up. I looked up some possibilities on feedingamerica.org, and there was a Good Shepherd Food Bank in Portland, so I called them, and they said they could use peanut butter, cereal, boxed dinners and canned veggies. So I found a store and got a bunch of that stuff. It’s fun to see if anything is on sale, and stretch the dollars as much as I can! I also got some ham and cheese and yogurt for myself (being optimistic that I could camp again tonight.) Then I found the big warehouse location for the food pantry – this is the third time I’ve made a donation to a feedingamerica.org place and they are huge warehouses that clearly serve a lot of different groups. It’s kind of sobering that the need is so great. I think I’m beginning to prefer doing the food donations to the church food pantries although in the end, it’ll all help someone.

When I was done with that, it was still raining, so I just decided to keep heading north along the coast. I passed through the town of Freeport and saw the L.L. Bean flagship store. It wasn’t as big as I thought it would be – I was expecting something huge like a Cabela’s store, but it wasn’t that big at all. There were a lot of other outlet stores there, and for someone who likes to shop, it’d be a fun little town. I would have done some walking, but it was still raining pretty hard. I continued northeast on Highway 1 and even in the rain it’s pretty – so many coves and inlets and bays – sometimes the water doesn’t even quite seem like it’s the ocean. The rain began to let up and I decided to park in the lot of a lobster stand and walk across a long bridge. It was sprinkling, and the walk across the bridge was good, but the sidewalks didn’t really seem to go anywhere else on either side of the bridge, so we only got in a mile and a quarter there, and it started to rain again anyway. No one was at the lobster stand because of the rain (lots of them are set up with picnic tables and all – much better on a sunny day!) but I went over to check it out. I didn’t want a whole lobster meal, and they mixed their lobster with mayo on the lobster rolls. I have nothing against mayo, but would prefer just butter and lemon on the lobster and they couldn’t do that. So I just settled for some trail mix in the car and kept driving. The rain began to let up again, and we got out in Rockland to walk, but there was so much construction, and traffic was heavy, and it wasn’t very enjoyable, so we didn’t walk much. I wasn’t having a lot of luck today so far!

Then we got to Camden, and that was a really pretty seaside town, and the rain had let up, so we were able to stretch out and walk 3.2 miles all over town and down by the harbor and into adjoining neighborhoods – it was a really nice walk. I like seeing all the boats in the harbor and there were some windjammer boats there too.

It was beginning to get dark at this point – the morning donation and meandering up the coast and the long walk had pretty much filled up the day. It looked like the rain had more or less stopped, and I drove just a little farther north to see about camping in the Camden Hills State Park. They didn’t have too many people there, so I drove around to choose my campsite, and got checked in. I was able to walk another mile and a quarter in the park before dark, but I came up about a mile and a half short today, which I’ll make up as I’m able to before leaving Maine. I’m getting much more efficient and fast at getting set up for the night (and Tula usually is just waiting for that air mattress to get inflated!)and once everything was set, I fixed my ham and cheese sandwich and had a yogurt and an apple too for dinner. Since it was still pretty damp out, I just did a little writing and computer stuff (the state park had wireless service!) in the van before turning in.