Thursday 7/25

Woke up earlier than we wanted and packed up and went to Bar Harbor. Since we were living to eat rather than eating to live, we only brought quick breakfast items like yogurt and oatmeal and coffee rather than whole meals so we had a quick breakfast and went into Bar Harbor. We learned that the Bar Harbor Club pool house lets guests come back the day after they actually stayed there (this offer may have expired...and don't quote me on it), we decided to enjoy the pool a bit longer which is what we should have done yesterday if we had known Acadia was a sucky experience. So we got some sun, did some swimming, and enjoyed a nice shower (our last for the trip since we were camping and I don't shower at campgrounds) and got some lunch. We wanted to go to Rosalie’s pizza but it didn’t open until 4:00 so we wandered around and decided on Cherrystones (although I would have been happy to go back to the Side Street Café). It was pretty mediocre. Cherrystones is like the TGI Fridays of Bar Harbor I think. Andy had a really expensive salad with lobster and I had a flatbread that was really strongly flavored. Wouldn’t recommend it but it wasn’t bad.

Then we hit the road for Portland. Our plan was to go to at least the Allagash brewery, but they were only open until 5:00 so we missed it. We found a campground that didn’t allow kids (intriguing, right?) called Wild Duck that was in Scarborough, right outside of Portland. It was decent. We had to check in before 7:00 though so our timing was all funky and we went there first, set up our tent, and met a very odd neighbor named Laurence (Laurie) Sanders from New Hampshire who found it very important to get to know the people camping near him and his wife, Peggy. He was the type of guy who apparently is very frugal – his wallet (which he took out to give us a mailing label with his address…why, I’m not sure) was totally falling apart and his glasses were held together with a rubber band. I’m not sure how that helped. They were so old and scratched and falling off his face I’m not sure how he saw out of them. He was super nice though. He said they were in Portland because he was learning about trees or something? What a character. 

Anyway, so then we went into Portland to have dinner. It was rainy and overcast and just kind of icky out but not cold. I found a place on trip advisor called Hot Suppa! that sounded good so we went there and trip advisor advised me well. The neighborhood was super sketchy but we got a parking spot right in front of the restaurant. We had poutine, which was awesome and evil, and then shared the short ribs because the poutine was so filling. Good thing we couldn’t decide on what to get and the poutine came first so we knew what we were in for. My new favorite meat is short ribs and I was not let down. It came with this amazingly flavorful potato hash. This may have been my favorite meal on the trip actually. I’ve had better short ribs, but these were right up there and the flavor of them was great. 

Poutine