who cares about pluto…

I did several different things on this trip so I’ve split it into Acadia, Fort Knox, Mt Washington, and this post about the travel in between.

I made my first trip away from Boston under my own steam at the weekend, and had an awesome time! I hired a car with the aim of having a look around Acadia National Park, which is up in Maine about six hours north of Boston. I went to the rental car place on Friday lunchtime, and picked up the “ugliest car ever”, aka Chrysler PT Cruiser. However, it did have an auxiliary jack on the stereo for my iPod, which redeemed it. It drove ok too…

I was rather apprehensive about driving in Boston traffic, it looks pretty scary from the pavement sometimes just walking to school each day. I managed to find my way out of town thanks to some directions from google maps, and was off on a rather hot 35 degree day

The first thing I encountered was five bucks or so of tolls. I must have stopped about four times to hand over a dollar or so. By the last I had to give the guy a $20 bill, which he cheerfully gave me $19 change for. Without exception everyone I met and talked to on the trip was nice.

It feels like all of New England is covered in trees outside the big cities. There was nothing but green of many shades all the way to Mt Desert Island, where Acadia is. One thing I noticed it that pretty much all the towns up that way have an American Flag hanging from every lamp-post. Why do I think that’s wierd, NZ’ers should be patriotic and follow the example!

Eventually I arrived at my destination, passing Fort Knox (Maine, not Kentucky) and a nice big bridge, a spiral staircase company, and many beautiful old houses. Everything is much more spaced out up there, and everyone drives a truck (American version of a truck, what I’d call a kickass big ute). More on Acadia here.
After a few days I was all Acadia’d out, and decided to drive west to see how different it looked in New Hampshire. I invented a new goal during my time in Boston: to visit a new state every month. It’s now the end of May and going to N.H. would allow me to tick Georgia, Maine, and N.H. since I arrived in March.

I left Acadia kind of late, and got distracted by Fort Knox so drove most of the way in the dark. I passed a number of lakes, and a lot of churches that all looked the same. I thought I was going in circles at first, but the highway numbers kept on corresponding to those on my map so I felt safe. Every road has a number and direction here (e.g. 22 South), and the intersections are well labelled so I found it easy to find my way across Maine, even in the dark. Along the way I achieved a goal I set for myself in Georgia, to use a drive though ATM!

I arrived at my campsite late, about 11pm and set up. I put the fly on Tiff’s very nice Mountain Hardware tent in anticipation of the rain, which bucketed down sometime during the night. As it is with camping, I slept in for ages and got up at 7am to find myself in more trees, broader leafed than most of the ones in Acadia, but a nice mix of evergreen and deciduous nonetheless.

I set off down the next valley since it looked like it would have interesting things in it. I started to see billboards for the “Mt Washington Auto Road”, which I dutifully paid my $20 for and had a look.

After the excitement of Mt Washington, all that was left was to get back to Boston by 4pm, the time my rental was due. Somewhere down the valley I hit my first traffic, from there every small town with lights would cause a 20 minute delay as everyone returning from their Memorial weekend holiday tried to squeeze through as quickly as possible. There were parts of entertainment along the way, what do you think this building holds?

I got bored of that pretty quickly and went off to another road that I thought would be better. It was and I made it back safe and sound, and more importantly in time to unload and fuel my car.

All up an awesome trip! It cost probably $500, of which $300 was car, of which half was insurance. I don’t want to piss anyone off in this litigious country…