It's a red letter day!

This place in Rockland serves a muffin and coffee breakfast and when we woke up this morning, there was the sound or a light sprinkle of rain.  Breakfast was served up on the second level in a sort of indoor patio.  They had all the newspapers and magazines and binoculars as well as the muffins, scones, and coffee.  So took our cans of Diet Coke with us and had a very leisurely breakfast.

We are headed South today with our main objective of finding the best lobster roll in Maine.  We headed South down Highway 1.  It is the coastal highway, but you rarely see the coast.  The forests are so thick along the roads that you never see the ocean.  The only time we've seen it is when we drive right down to the harbor or when we go to the top of a coastal mountain.  Its very different than California.

We keep going and going and going.  I had remembered from the Internet that someone said it was about ten miles south of Rockland.  We were trying to get there early because there is always a line.  We're on task to arrive when we suddenly hit traffic.  It is backed up as far as we can see and over the hill and around the curve.  We crawl along for over an hour, thinking there is some accident ahead, when we cross a bridge and see to our amazement a long line of people standing in line next to a red roadside shack.  This is it!  All of the backup traffic was caused by people stopping, and oogling, and waiting for pedestrians to run across the road.  We later found out that it was also backed up the other direction as well...AMAZING!

Well, we pull out of line and start cruising around for a parking space.  I dropped off Maridee at the end of the line and then found myself a place to park.  The line really wasn't that long--maybe just 50 feet of two people thick.  But the line moves agonizingly slow.  It takes us an HOUR and a HALF to get to the order window.  It's cash only and the price of the lobster rolls aren't even posted!  Who cares!  We ordered two lobster rolls, two Diet Cokes (well actually two Diet Pepsi's!  I don't think anyone sells Coke in Maine!), also an order of deep-fried zuccini's and a Whoopie Pie for about $50.  I think the rolls were about $16.95 each.

OK, these lobster rolls are totally unlike any of the other lobster rolls we have tried.  There was no mayo dressing (like a chicken salad), it was ALL lobster.  They advertise that you get the meat of more than one lobster in every roll.  Mine had TWO tails and at least two claws and a whole lot of other lobster meat.  I've never seen anything like it.  They were SOOOO good.

After a delicious lunch we took our sunburned bodies (from standing in the hot sun for nearly 2 hours) and kept driving. We made it to Portland, Maine where we had found a laudromat, a haircut for Jim and a Post Office to drop off some mail. Finding a reasonable hotel was another feat though. Our computer had no more battery life, we had no map of the area and we having a hard time finding the right area to look.

Finally we found a McDonald's and surely they must have plugs so that we could plug in our computer and pull up a map of Portland. But not a SINGLE outlet was found. As I looked around looking for an outlet a nice couple asked if I was missing something. I told them my story and they said, "Oh this is where you need to go. Just turn left here, go 2 miles, turn left at the Home Depot and there are all sorts of hotels in that area."

Sure enough we followed their directions and found a nice Howard Johnson's.  We are headed to Boston tomorrow. Print this post