What I Did on My Summer Vacation

I'm back home from my summer road trip. We drove from one end of the coast to the other, or a bit over four thousand miles in ten days, so it was fairly epic. I personally climbed on top of mountains, went caving inside them and otherwise pretended I was thirty years younger than I am. I did okay, too.

Because I can't let you escape without showing you some pictures, here's a slideshow of some of the delightful things we encountered along the way:



Some observations from the road:

1. All the hoopla about people from Maine being standoffish and crabby? It's nonsense. They were the warmest, friendliest folks we met on the road.

2. When your innkeeper recommends a local place to dine, listen to him.

3. Every tourist-magnet town in America seems plagued by three things: not enough parking, public restrooms or places to sit for five minutes so you can change camera batteries.

4. Bed & Breakfast inns -- even the ones you read about in those glossy travel magazines -- often offer rates as cheap or cheaper than chain hotels. Call them and check.

5. Also, in Maine? Wonderful glorious little indie bookstores everywhere, often two or three in the same town. All the ones I visited had at least a half dozen people browsing through their shelves, too.

Now I'm off to unpack and figure out where I put the laptop power cable so I wouldn't forget it, which of course I've forgotten . . .