A Trip to "Vacationland"

(Mary Clare Writing) In August, Dan and I went with Dan's mom to Bangor, Maine. Along the way we stopped at the Divine Mercy Shrine in Stockbridge, MA. They had a rosary procession around the shrine. The church is much smaller than it looks on EWTN.






















The next day, we took a bus from Boston to Bangor, which is a four hour ride. We got to see Dan's family's property. It's on a nice scenic hill. It seemed pretty rural to me, but Dan's mom was shocked at how developed it had become. Bangor is trying to become very hippy/Vermonty (Editor: Damn out-of-towners!). We went in their new art museum that Dan's mom remembers when it was a Sears. Ehhh (Editor: It ain't no Uffizi!). There was a bakery run by Franciscans with great cookies and fresh lemonade. We ate at the Sea Dog, right on the river and they had some good seafood, especially the clam chowder (Editor: Good band too!). We took a steamship ride down the river and learned about Maine's logging history. We also found the _real_ Paul Bunyon statue, which used to face the river, except they built a new casino right in front of it. The town was great because, even in tourist season, there was no traffic and no problem finding parking. We made a side trip to the University of Maine at Orono campus, 20 minutes away. It's their main campus and was huge. Dan was impressed by the gigantic cafeteria that had stations with every type of food imaginable. Dan's mom enjoyed their farm museum and old schoolhouse.

On our way back we stopped in Boston and did one of the famous duck tours. We stayed at the fancy Charles Hotel in Cambridge, a longtime ambition of mine, and I showed them around Harvard Yard.

Maine is really peaceful and we'd love to go back to see more of it.