Family Vacation!

Dear Family and Friends,
It's August! Joey, Clara and I have a few more weeks of summer to enjoy before our lives get really busy again. It's been a great summer, and I would like to write a couple of posts about the two big trips we took this summer. This post will cover our family trip to Portsmouth, New Hampshire and Boothbay Harbor, Maine. 

At the beginning of June we took a three night trip to Maine. Originally we were going to spend the whole time in Maine, but after doing some research and wanting to break up the trip for Clara, we decided to spend one night in Portsmouth, NH. We had never been to Portsmouth, but there was a lot to do there for Clara, and we were impressed with the wealth of shops and resteraunts in the downtown. 

We enjoyed touring downtown Portsmouth and learning about the history of the city. Portsmouth was settled in 1623, and it claims to be the third oldest city in our country. 

Clara found some fun things to do in Portsmouth, including active play at an indoor gym called "Rumble Tumble", and swimming in the hotel swimming pool with daddy. There was also an amazing toy store downtown, and we had trouble getting her to leave since they had so many toys for kids to play with.

There were many different restaurants to chose from in Portsmouth, and we ended up having a really great dinner at a tapas restraunt called "Moxy". We definitely hope to return to Portsmouth again in the future. It's only 2 and 1/2 hours from us, and it's really an interesting place. 

After leaving portsmouth, we headed to our next destination, Boothbay Harbor Maine. We took our time, and made several stops. One of our first stops was the "York's Wild Kingdom" zoo in York Beach, Maine. It was a really nice zoo, and Clara was thrilled to be able to feed the deer. The goats were a bit aggressive, though, so she let daddy do the feeding.

Once we arrived in Boothbay Harbor, we stayed at the "Fisherman's Wharf Inn". It was nothing fancy, but the room was clean, and we had a nice view of the harbor from our deck. The town of Boothbay Harbor is very charming. It is a beautiful coastal town and is popular with tourists, so we were glad to be there in June before the busy season hit. There are a lot of places to eat, and various shops to enjoy. We had our first meal at "The Lobster Dock", a shack overlooking the water, and the lobster was delicious!

We took a scenic drive around Boothbay Harbor and, as always, we were blown away by the beauty of the Maine coast. It is very different from the Connecticut coast where we live. There are pine trees, rocky cliffs, many small water inlets and, of course, lobster buoys everywhere. We even discovered a church that looked a little like Calvary Church. 

One of the best things we did on the trip was visiting the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves nature and beautiful gardens. There are so many different gardens to see that we didn't even get to all of them. They have an incredible children's garden with a design is based on famous children's books like "Peter Rabbit". Clara loved the children's gardens, especially the little fairy hut, where she served us tea and cookies.

On our way home from Maine, we stopped at the L.L. Bean outlets in Freeport. There were a lot of shops, and Clara wanted ice cream from Ben and Jerry's. As a senior in high school, I had attended the Bowdoin International Music Festival in Maine as a student, and had visited Freeport with friends while I was there. I even had ice cream from the Ben and Jerry's store. It was fun to be back with Joey and Clara. 

Joey and I fell in love with Maine when we honeymooned near Acadia National Park back in 2007. By the time June rolls around, we find we really need some quality time together, just the three of us, and now that we live on the East Coast, Maine is an easy place to visit. Clara is old enough now that she really enjoys the traveling, does well in the car and is fine in the hotel room. During this trip, she had some kind of strange sleep schedule going, and she woke up every morning at 6:00AM. We had an early start to our days, and it was fine, but we were all pretty exhausted when we returned home. It's important for us to spend time together and make memories together, and I am grateful that we were able to have such a fun trip. Clara must have enjoyed it too, because she was not happy when she found out we were heading home. "I want more 'vercation' Mamma and Daddy!" 

Stay tuned for my next post, which will cover the big, two week trip we took to Minnesota during July. We drove from CT to MN with a three year old! Were we crazy? You will just have to wait and see...

Happy August!
Joey, Erin and Clara