*I wanted to get this last post up before I went to Chicago, but neglected to and now I have to post it before I can move forward. I'm SO behind on stories and photos and totally overwhelmed. Good news is I'll have things to post every day this week, most likely.*
[Trip Day 5: July 17th Heading Home]
It rained all night our second night in Maine. We stayed mostly dry. I woke up ridiculously early and went on my laptop for a bit in the car (yes, the camp had wi-fi, but I mostly just used it to email my daughter at her overnight camp and post the occasional Twitter). My back was killing me. Eventually I started packing up everything I could that wasn't in the tent or the tent itself, and made coffee. Pete got up and we broke down the rest of camp. We were in the car and ready to check out at 9am.Our plan was to drive down the coast until the town of Exeter, NH, where an old friend of mine since high school had recently moved. Her daughter turns 2 in August and I had yet to meet her! Originally we were going to go slowly and camp one more night somewhere between there and home, but we were both ready to get home and decided to see if we could make it all the way. No more avoiding highways on the GPS.
I had a problem, however. I didn't have Alison's phone number. She was supposed to have emailed it to me and hadn't yet as of that morning. She also thought I'd be coming through town on Saturday. This was Friday. As we got about an hour or so away, I called my friend Siobhan and left her a message saying I needed Alison's number, and she called back just in time with it (when we were coming to the exit for the town). She gave me Alison's husband's number too. I exited and pulled off the road to phone. "Mailbox full" was the response! Great. I can't leave a message. I phoned her husband and got voice mail, but didn't leave a message since I had no idea how long we'd have to wait for him to call back. Disappointed, I turned around to get back on the highway heading home. I was almost in tears, actually, knowing I was that close and couldn't see my friend! And then he called back to see who it was. He told me Alison had misplaced her phone (they've been living out of hotel rooms for weeks and weeks as they wait for their house to be ready). He said he'd see if she was at the Inn and have her call me back. I had pulled over on route 101 or 100, just before the exit to get onto I-95, and we sat waiting.
And then the state trooper pulled up behind us. LOL. He was very nice, but said "You can't wait here!" after I explained what we were doing. We started driving to pull off again and Alison phoned. Hooray!
We were able to see her and meet her adorable daughter and sit by the river for about 2 hours. We sat near a famous food cart run by Ian, who smokes and grills real hot dogs, sausages, and chorizos. We had one of each. Turns out Ian is from my neck of the woods, too!
After that we b-lined it for home, stopping when we needed to switch drivers. We drove through rush hour in Connecticut (which sucks any time of day, actually...driving through it on the highway, not the state), through thunderstorms in NY. We made it home at 10pm, exhausted, delirious, and grateful. We slept like the dead that night, happy.
