Episode Transcript
Welcome to episode three of the podcast. In this episode, we're gonna talk about our northeast exploration. We're gonna start with exploring Maine. when we did our first RV trip, we went from Tennessee all the way up to Maine and back down through New York and Providence and et cetera. But today we're going to start with Main. That was the best state that we visited when we first started out, especially. So when we first got into Maine we went through the New York section, the busy traffic section. We learned later not to go to Maine but the first town you're going to hit in Maine, Portland, about 30 miles from the state line of Massachusetts. Portland is a great town. Scarborough is the first area that you'll come into that has the, some of the things you'll want to do in Scarborough there. For those of you with an rv, there is a cabella's where you can park your RV there. They had water there and a dump station. Some people reporting that. Those are not there no more. I'm not sure. It's been a while since we've been there, but. When we were there, they had water to fill your tanks in a dump station there at De Cabela's, and it's a huge parking lot in the shopping center. And if we rolled in later that night and we were able to check out like the Portland Pie Company, great pizza place, where we were able to just rest the rest of the day and walk our RV over to that that pizza place and eat. Relax that's in Scarborough. And then the next morning when we got up, we went to the Holy Donuts. I don't know if anyone has heard of the Holy Donuts, but it's like the best donut that we have had by far on the east or west coast in, in our opinion. There are three locations. We've been to all three of them. The Scarborough location is probably the worst one. I would recommend the one on the bypass towards downtown Portland, or the one in downtown Portland. They have really good donuts. But you gotta get there early. 'cause they only make 'em once a day and once they're gone, they're gone and they close. The first day we went downtown and it was about three 30 and they were already closed. They had already sold out. But those are great donuts. The Holy Donuts. They're called. And then the location on the way downtown looks like a, looks like a dump. Actually. It's, the best location for your donuts that we found. Make 'em there. But yeah checkout Scarborough. There's a, like a 400 pound chocolate mousse in one of the areas there in a candy shop. It was really cool to see. It's not far from the holy donut there in Scarborough. And then, as you make your way downtown, it's got some nice scenery across the bridge. And when you get downtown it was kind of interesting because all the roads and sidewalks were brick pavers. So that was kind of interesting to us. You gotta be careful when you walk too, 'cause you could trip if you're clumsy. but, but yeah, that was that was interesting for us. We did drive our Class B RV downtown and were able to park with no problem, however. I do see that there could be issues if you had a larger Class C or a Class A or fifth Wheel or anything like that charter trailer there could be some issues there. But we had no issue with the class BII really wouldn't recommend the others. Maybe just park in the parking lot at Scarborugh and, and go downtown and come back to your rig later. Yeah, that, that was great. There was places to eat on the water on. On the pier where they had lobster and lobster rolls, et cetera. So we actually went there. They have a tour for the head lighthouse there in Portland. And Portland is the capital of Maine. That is the head lighthouse. We went out to that park head lighthouse, we took our Holy donuts out there and ate 'em and made a video. You could check out our video on our YouTube page for those holy donuts. It was really beautiful how that head, lighthouse park, how the cliff kind of contoured the ocean there. Around that lighthouse kinda made a kind of a s shape, if you will. It was really nice see all these fishing boats out there and it was a really nice area just to go out there and have a picnic donuts and stuff. There are tours that you could do for Portland and they're av via tour.com, V-I-A-T-O r.com, where you can go to get tours of Portland. We did not do a tour of Portland, we did it on our own. 'Cause we were in our RV and didn't want to be bound to that schedule that day 'cause it was so beautiful there. So Portland definitely it to stop. Actually, I would stop there. Going to going up to Bar Harbor. We just went to Bar Harbor and then went back. We stopped again. Definitely. Really the reason we stopped again was for the Holy Donuts. We had to get more Holy Donuts. The next area as we progressed north for Bar Harbor. Bar Harbor's about three hours away from Portland, but we went up about 15, 20 minutes to Freeport. Freeport is a nice little town. It had a lot of mom and pop shops. They did really well. And those mom and pop shops they're okay. But you know, we tried the donuts there too, and they wasn't as good as the holy donut. I guess we were spoiled. But the big attraction there in the downtown area, other than the, small mom and pop shop souvenir shops is LL bean. That is the headquarters in the original LL Bean store, and it is huge and it's open 24 7 all year round as well. And the park, there is a parking lot where you can park your RVs for free. It's dry camping. No, no electric, no dumpster, anything like that. But you can park your RVs there for free. But the pun or the joke there is it's not free because you're going to buy something at LL Bean and. That may be the most expensive park RV parking spot that you've had based on that, based on how much you spend at LL Bean or anything like that. But it was pretty cool to go up there. You take your picture with the big boots and all that, and they have all kinds of animal and wildlife scenes set up inside the store. We, we spent probably four hours just around the store, taking pictures, walking around. Looking at stuff. So it was pretty nice there too. That is in Freeport. And you know, we also have a blog in out there called Free Stuff in Freeport, all the free things that we saw there. As you make your way outta Freeport, just five miles away is a town called Yarmouth. And Yarmouth is famous for, it has a map company and that map company. As a free exhibit of the world's largest rotating globe. We went there and probably spent two hours in there looking at the globe, taking pictures reading all about it and how it was made and things like that. So it, that was a hidden gem that's very much worth the day. I would definitely recommend that. And it's free. And then after Yarmouth we made our way. To Bar Harbor. So when you get through Freeport Yarmouth and you're heading up there we took the interstate that day. Bar Harbor was about two and a half hours from there. And when we came into Bar Harbor or the area there there's a Walmart parking lot. So again, for RVs. Walmart was a great place to stay for free. All kinds of RVs there stay in, and the cell coverage there was awesome. We could actually stream any of our streaming apps from that parking lot just using cellular data, so we didn't need any extra stuff. So it was a really good spot. We did end up staying in one of the other campgrounds, not too far away from there. Just so we could dump our tanks and get hot showers and things like that. But that Walmart there is a great, was a great stay when we stayed there and I'm, they probably got 5G sales by now. But when you go there and you go into Bar Harbor. bar Harbor is, the touristy town that everyone knows in that area. It's a lot of shops downtown. Again, just a classic touristy town. Like Portland. You could eat, fresh lobster on the pier or on the dock or whatever. But it has a great sunset. You can actually see the sunset from there in Bar Harbor, and it was really great. Really great to see that sunset. It was really pretty. The weather was nice. We went in late September. It was really, really nice. Lots of food choices, desserts, things like that. One thing I will warn you about Bar Harbor is it is a cruise ship stop. So you might want to try to plan your arrival in Bar Harbor around when the cruise ships will not be there, so you don't get inundated with crowds downtown bar. It ain't that big, but. it is, you know, a touristy town when you have these ships there. One of the biggest reasons we went to Bar Harbor is 'cause we wanted to go to Acadia National Park. So Acadia National Park is right in that area there. Bar Harbor is the town closest to the park. And in Acadia National Park, it's probably the top of our list of all the parks we've been to thus far. We've went to a lot of parks out west. This is a delayed podcast, but we've went to a lot of parks out west. But Acadia is the top of our we grew up in the mountains and Acadia. It's where the mountains meet the rock. Cliffs that meet the oceans. Yeah. All three of those elements all in one, one place. That park really, really pretty. Some of the main attractions in that park are. Park Loop Road. When you go there, you have to check in and get your pass and all that and get your map and it's Park Loop Road. It just takes you, around the whole park. With, through all the attractions, all the hiking trails and stuff. There is a section of that park though, where you have a tunnel on a bridge. Some large RVs will not be able to make it through that tunnel bridge. So you just need to make sure our Class B was fine. It was just 10 foot tall. But if you got a 13 foot or a Class A, it probably, it wouldn't make it that tunnel. We had Park Loop Road, we Cadillac Mountain, we went on Cadillac Mountain and because we had our rv, we were able to go up there and early, in the morning and then just lay down in the bed and wait. And then it's a race to get to the cliff. Or sunrise. So Cadillac Mountain is known to be the first sunrise on the East coast where the sunrise is first on the East coast, the quick earliest on the East Coast. So that was really a good experience. We got all kinds of pictures and blogs about that as well. And then Jordan Pond. Jordan Pond is, you know, like I says, it's a pond, but it's more of an eatery, if you will. It's more of a old style where they have fancy dinners out on the yard and that. And then there's a trail you can walk down to the water Jordan pond. There's also a path you can take a hiking trail from Jordan Pond as well. And it takes you round the water and through the round around the pond actually. So that was a really, really nice. Sand Beach is another attraction there. It's like a beach where people can, like a regular beach where you can go swimming and if you dare, but the waters are colder up there than they are down south. So swim at your own risk, that, that was a nice, that was a nice stop too thunder hole. As you progress around that loop, you'll see a lot of a trails and attractions for thunder hole. Thunder hole was cool. It's a little area where there, when it's high tide, it comes in and it makes the big splash and can splash you up there on top of the rocks and everything. And that was a good photo opportunity there to the thunder hole. And then all the hiking trails you got rest of pi trail, beehive trail, the Jordan Pond path, we talked about an ocean path. And then the great head trail. Those are some trails. The beehive one is kind of the scariest one. You get up there way on a cliff and holding onto a chain, and you look down and see all the water oceans down there. Another attraction in the park is the Bass Harbor lighthouse. So if you like the lighthouses like we did at Portland, you can go to the Bass Harbor Lighthouse. Um, it was, it was really cool. Parking is limited there. Even if you just drive a regular vehicle, it was tight parking. We were in our Class B that day and luckily found a spot where we can get into. There's no way a Class C or above could make it into that parking. And there is a line you have to wait for people. We waited about 30 minutes and were able to find a spot. And it's hard to turn around even if you have a larger truck, like as long, our van is just 21 foot long. Some trucks are that long and it may be difficult for a larger truck to park in too. So just be aware. And it was actually in the park. I wasn't, when we went there, we married, it was part of the park, but it is part of the park. Yeah. That's, that was the areas that we had. I went to Bar Harbor Kaia National Park. Did some of those attractions. Did a lot of the hiking trails, which were nice. And then we work our way back down, there's the Freeport stop, there's the Eartha Stop in, in Yarmouth and then back to Portland. That was our, the extent of our trip to Maine. The other areas wasn't as interesting. I liked the coasty part of Maine where the ocean meets the rocks, meet the mountains. That's the part that we liked it, we were in one day we'll probably go back up through there and go to Nova Scotia and take the ferry and do all that stuff. But this was just a United States Northeast trip. Yeah, that was our trip. What we did, overview. You can look on our website, Pass the brockly.com for some blogs and videos and YouTube trip there. as we continue on our next podcast, that's the kind of, we'll wrap up this one, but on our next podcast we will talk about as we progress our way down we went through New Hampshire Vermont, and we went back over to, Boston and Massachusetts Salem, Plymouth, those areas, Providence, Cape Cod. So we'll talk about those in future podcasts, but as we do our, as our Northeast exploration. Appreciate you joining and listen in and we'll catch you on the next one.
