From Maine to New Hampshire

Just over 20 years ago, we joined the Disney Vacation Club.  One aspect of DVC membership is the ability to exchange your DVC points into other timeshare/resorts through groups like RCI or, in the old days, Interval International.  One day I was just browsing through the options available and saw a really cute resort in Ogunquit, Maine, right on the Maine coastline.  It looked like a great place to have a northern seashore vacation.  But we weren’t going to Maine any time soon and didn’t want to make a trip just to go to Ogunquit all the way from Florida, so I put it aside in my mind.

But when we started planning our Northeast Road Trip and I saw Ogunquit on the map, it reminded me that I really wanted to go check it out, so we added it to the itinerary as a pass through, stop and look around a minute place on the way from Portland, Maine, to where my uncle and his family live in southern New Hampshire.

This day was a rainy, drizzly kind of day, so I’m glad we didn’t plan much for Ogunquit.  In fact, the weather actually put us ahead of schedule so we had to scrap our lunch plans and find something else to do so we wouldn’t be too early for our planned visit with the relatives.

The one thing I wanted to do was walk along the Marginal Way.  This is a 1.25 mile paved footpath that goes along the rugged coastline of Ogunquit allowing you to walk safely but feel like you’re on the edge of the cliffs and rocks.  It provides wonderful views of the Maine coastline.  It's a good place for a stroll, but it's not like a boardwalk like we saw in Virginia Beach.

About halfway, there’s the Lobster Point Lighthouse which is so cute – and I’m almost as tall as it, haha!  We just walked from the northern end of the Marginal Way to the lighthouse and back as we only paid for an hour of parking.  Here are a few pictures from our walk and the lighthouse.

Speaking of parking, when we left from Burlington, Vermont, I had removed the ParkMobile app from my phone, thinking we were done with it.  But that’s the same app they use for Ogunquit parking, so I had to get it set back up for the hour we parked there.

If it hadn’t been raining, we would have enjoyed browsing some of the shops and cafes, but even with the rain, there were lines out the door and wrapped around the buildings and down the sidewalks of some of the more popular spots.

From Ogunquit, we headed towards New Hampshire, ending our week’s stay in Maine.  We saw quite a bit of DH’s 50th state while we were there.  We did stop at the Maine Visitor Information Center on the way out, and at that point we figured we had been to five of their seven locations.

We planned to eat lunch in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, at a restaurant called 110 Grill that gets lots of good reviews, especially related to their gluten-free options and handling.  But while we were driving that way, I realized that this location was in downtown Portsmouth and it required parking at a parking garage.  No thank you!  It was already going to be a bit earlier to eat lunch than we wanted, and I was so done with paying to park!  I mean, I get that’s how it is in some cities and more congested areas, but wow, I never set up a “parking” fund!

So instead, we drove on to North Hampton, New Hampshire, to visit the Fuller Gardens.  This wasn’t originally on our itinerary but I had seen it on the American Horticultural Society’s reciprocal network map.  This is a small garden on the property of former Massachusetts Governor Fuller (1924).  It is right along the coastline among beautiful homes (mansions, really).  The Fuller mansion has been demolished, but the gardens were saved.  Because it was a drizzly day, there were only a few other people there, so that made it nice to stroll around and pretend like the gardens were my yard.  Their dahlias were also in full bloom like the ones at the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden where we were a few days before.  Here are a few pictures from our visit there along with a couple of the beautiful houses along the way.

We still hadn’t figured out lunch so I was trying to find something on the fly using my Find Me Gluten Free app and the Google.  I could see that we were about to be headed into no services land on the way to my uncle’s place, so I had DH pull over so we could sort it out rather than passing by all the options.  I found a BBQ place that seemed like a good option, so when I put it into Google maps, it said “you have arrived.”  We were right across the street from it, and neither one of us had even noticed!  The food and service were good, too.

We made it to where my uncle lives mid-afternoon and we had a lovely visit for about 2 ½ hours with my uncle, aunt, and cousin.  We haven’t seen them since 2013.  My cousin also is gluten-free, so she had made a delicious gluten-free apple cake for the visit.  It was so delicious, and it was so great to not have to worry about it because she is as vigilant as I am.

From there, we headed to Merrimack, New Hampshire, where we spent the night.  When we arrived, we found that we had been upgraded to a suite, so it was nice to have the extra space in the room.  The next two travel days were about getting to Hershey, Pennsylvania, but we also found a few things to do along the way!

~ Cindy D.