The past few days were spent in typical pre-Acadia-trip fashion: running around the house making sure we don’t forget this or that, making lists, figuring out what houseplants need to be moved where, etc. Wednesday morning involved a bit of that too, but we also had more time to relax and after filling the car and filling ourselves with tuna sandwiches and taking a brief nap, we headed out around 4:00pm.

I was concerned about leaving at that time because I thought it would place us in the worst part of the journey (Connecticut) right around rush hour. Essentially it did, but somehow there was very little traffic compared to what we usually encounter. It was really quite astonishing!

We decided to take a snack break at one of our usual pit stops along the way, Rein’s Deli. I already had a bagel with cream cheese waiting in the car for snacks later, so I chose to forego the bagel I usually order at the deli and just have the potato pancakes—another favorite of ours—instead. Rich also ordered the potato pancakes as well as matzo ball soup, which we shared.

While we were eating, Rich returned to the car to retrieve his vest and long story short, we realized we had brought the wrong car key fob with us! The only reason we were able to drive the car was that we had also brought our spare key fob as a backup (which we always do). We still wanted to have a backup just in case, so we called Dad to ask if he could bring it up when he joins us on Tuesday. In the meantime we’ll just have to be extra careful that we don’t lose the one we have!

After nearly an hour spent relaxing at the deli—and buying some candy fruit slices to enjoy during our hikes!—we were back on the highway. Travel was smooth again and we arrived at the Kittery, Maine rest area around 10:45pm. This is significantly earlier than we usually arrive there, so we were hoping for lots of rest. That didn’t quite happen because it was incredibly hot and humid inside the car. Overall this has been a warm summer in the east, and for most areas of the northeast, the most humid summer on record. We’re just coming off another spell of upper 80s-90s and tropical dewpoints, and we sure were feeling it overnight! Rich had to let the car run for a few minutes several times during the night just so the air conditioning could attempt to dry out the air. That made the situation much more comfortable, if only temporarily, and we were able to get some rest.

The only other issue was the light that was hitting me in the eye like a spotlight unless I lay in one specific spot. I was dreaming/daydreaming about ways to disable it like we might in an adventure game: shooting it with a slingshot that I built from things I found in the woods, finding scissors and cutting the wires, or finding the fuse box and disabling it!