The Long, Long Night

The afternoon of July 8, we left Toronto. We had a hotel reservation in Montreal for that evening, and a cabin rented in Hancock, Maine reserved for the 9th through the 11th. We really didn't have an agenda for Montreal, other than a place to sleep before our most anticipated destination, Maine, which was over 650 miles away as the bird flies. As we looked more closely at mapquest, we realized that there were no good routes from Montreal down to Vermont and New Hampshire, two states through which we wanted to pass since we just happened to be in the area. In fact, going by way of Montreal at all was just going to add mileage to our trip. The reason we had originally booked a hotel there is that there is no good stopping point in upstate New York or thereabouts.

Well, Franz was tired of paying Canadian gas prices, so his vote was to swing down into New York at our first available crossing and just see how the night played out. We pulled over before the first bridge crossing to the south and made a quick call to cancel our reservation in Montreal. As the sun began to set, we were heading into some of the most beautiful countryside we'd seen yet: the Adirondacks. Unfortunately for us, the cell service was completely unreliable in that area, so our "mapquesting" wasn't going to cut it. The trees were huge and the towns rather small and infrequent. Finally, much later, we found a gas station to pull into for a top off and a real atlas.

I went inside and began through the locals for a section of maps. I couldn't see any. Finally I got the attention of the cashier, who motioned me to the tip top of a refrigerator of Coke. Balanced up there was one huge 2010 Rand McNally road atlas. At 5'4," I use a step stool to reach the top cabinets in my kitchen, so this was not the ideal location for the one thing I needed most this night. I wasn't going to be getting any help from the staff, either. My fingers brushed the edge of the atlas. I knew if I could just squeeze a little between the free-standing fridge and the open front drink cooler beside it (there was a little gap), I could get a grasp on that year-old atlas. That last little squeeze did it, and just as I managed to successfully pluck the book from its holder, an un-noticed, magnetized lollipop display that must have been perfectly balanced on the edge of the cooler next to me fell crashing to the ground. You know those big round suckers, about two inches in diameter, that come in flavors like cotton candy and piña colada? Well, this rinky-dink plastic display had one magnet on the back of a long strip. Two magnets were missing. It also had about a hundred little hollow plastic tubes affixed to it in a 180-degree radius like a porcupine. Each of these tubes could hold a lollipop stick and most of them were full. Balancing my purse and the 11x17 atlas, I squatted down and picked up, individually, each of those $%^&*( suckers and fitted their little sticks back in the tubes of the display that obviously could not hold them. The crowded gas station had two types of people in it, including employees: those that ignored me and those that watched me for the 15 minutes it took me to pick them all up and tuck them in. When I attempted to put the display back on the narrow metallic post on the edge of the cooler, the weight of the suckers pulled it down, down, down until it was perched at the edge of a lip near the front. This was apparently where it had been before I ran into it. I knew that it was going over again if even a breeze hit it wrong, but apparently that is what locals around there do for fun - booby trap sucker displays. Good times.

As we pulled out of the station onto one of the very small highways dotted with "scenic route" green dots on the map, the sun set and the road, to us, became just slow and winding without the view. One of the reasons we'd been avoiding this part of the state is that mapquest alerted us to a bridge closure at the major crossing over Lake Champlain, which forms the eastern boundary of New York, and which must be crossed to reach Vermont. The website was routing people into Canada or much further south to stay away from it. However, just before we'd lost cell signal, I'd been able to pull up information that seemed to say there was a 24-hour ferry in place at the former bridge. Well, we decided to gamble, and go for it. We fed the kids out of the cavernous coolers that night, not wanting to stop since it seemed like we'd be driving all night although we hadn't yet verbally committed to it. We were also considering trying to find a hotel in the Burlington, Vermont area but it was looking pretty pricey there. It would work if we got desperate.

We could see just enough to realize we were missing some spectacular scenery. We did actually drive through the entire Adirondacks, just as we had the Grand Tetons a previous year, completely in the dark. Great planning on our part!

The kids fell asleep in the back, after watching a movie, and we drove on in peaceful silence. It is difficult to describe the pull of the road once the kids are asleep. When you've been traveling with the family circus in the backseat all day, the peace and quiet of night driving is addictive. You really don't want to stop unless you absolutely have to. Why break the spell?

Finally, about 1:00 AM, we reached the signs for the ferry. We were in luck, it was open! We pulled onto the ferry with two other cars for the crossing to Vermont. Jackson woke up immediately. He got to get out of his infernal carseat, and enjoyed sitting on our laps, and then walking around the boat with Franz. Maddie woke up and she and I made a last-minute bathroom run just before the boat docked. Katie never did rouse. She missed the whole thing.
The fresh air revived us, and we definitely did not feel like stopping in Burlington and unloading the 600 pounds of junk and waking up kids at that point. So, we pressed on. About two hours later, as the roas became very close and an eerie mist skimmed the base of it, rising out of the humidity, Franz began to blink longer and longer. I asked him to pull over, and I took the wheel. He stretched out in the passenger seat. (Can you picture the luxury of it: cramped knees, tilted head, contorted back?) and fell asleep. Without street lights, and with the huge coniferous Vermont trees stretching up alongside the two-lane highway, it felt like driving through a deep canyon. The mist rose up to the level of my headlights and the signs for elk made me nervous. I haven't experienced a quiet or a dark so intense as the three hours I drove that early morning through Vermont and into New Hampshire. As the world began to lighten again, farmhouses, rolling hills, and maple farms began to emerge from the dark. It was beautiful.

At about 5:30, I pulled into a Dunkin Donuts, tired. So, so tired. We woke everyone for a bathroom break, and treated our cramped companions to a donut. Think how tired Franz must have been to allow donuts in the car!! I took a couple of catnaps in the passenger seat and before we knew it we were in Maine. The kids fell asleep again, and we pulled over for an hour's nap ourselves. We reached Bar Harbor, Maine that morning, in time for a late breakfast. Randomly selecting a restaurant off the GPS, we landed at Kathy's Chowder House. Sounds great, doesn't it? The food reminds me of Karen's in Rochester. However, the server we had was very sub-par, and we waited for our food for over 45 minutes. My order, and several others in our section of the restaurant, was incorrect. However, after that wait, it didn't matter at all. We were famished and antsy, and ate quickly once given the opportunity. On our way out, Kathy (the namesake) came out and invited each of the kids to select a stuffed animal from an old salad bar cart she had near the front, which was overflowing with stuffed animals. Well, the kids could have waited two hours for breakfast and this would have made up for it! Jackson, in fact, selected a teddy bear that has now become a necessary in his crib, second only to his blanket in the scheme of favorites.

That morning, we drove down to the visitor center at Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island, and then we headed out to the cabin, probably 40 minutes from there. Since we had several days there, we planned to relax for the rest of the day, nap, and explore. It had been a very long night, indeed, but we were glad to be where we were so early in the day.