Our trip – Final
October 21st, 2011Finally, our car is parked. She is tired as are the drivers. After 7 months on the road, we accumulated 40000 km, some 25000 miles, and saw a lot in the 34 States that we visited, but succeeded in leaving us some areas still to visit : the Great Lakes, New England and most of the East Coast… Now we can say that there is too much to see in the US, and we didn’t even start Canada ! The map below is our trip:
In red : what we did
Blue circle : where we slept and visited
Green square : what we visited
En rouge : notre trajet
Cercle bleu : où nous avons dormi et visité
Carré vert : ce que nous avons visité
Our refuge in Maine
October 21st, 2011October 1st -3rd
After a long day “on the road”, we finally arrived in York Beach, the final destination of our U.S.A. road trip. We were meeting one of my good friends from my B.U. days, Jacquie, at her parents’ house. They had graciously agreed to let us leave our car there for a few weeks while we returned to France. Since I last saw Jacquie at her wedding three years ago, she’s had two beautiful little girls. We arrived around 8pm, just as the girls had got to sleep. We went to a yummy seafood restaurant for dinner (the specialty of the Maine Coast) and caught up old times and future plans.
The next morning, Jacquie’s parents, Mary Lou and Jean-Marie spoiled us with a big American breakfast. They were my adoptive family when I was in college and I spent a lot of holidays with them because it wasn’t always easy to return to Florida.
The weather was terrible- It was pouring rain. So, we took advantage of the day to relax and prepare our suitcases for our trip to Europe. I also spent a little time looking at job offers online. Jacquie had given me some leads. Finally, I really started to imagine what the next stage of our life might be like.
On Monday, the day of our flight to Europe, we woke up to a beautiful day. The sun was shining and the sky was blue. We needed some fresh air before going to the airport so we took a walk to see the York lighthouse, a classic New England lighthouse that sits on a rock off the mainland. To access it the guardian has to take a funicular which is suspended in the air above the ocean.
Mid-afternoon, Mary Lou and Jean-Marie drove us to the bus in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. We took a very swanky bus to Logan Airport in Boston. We had some extra time so I called my mom and spent some time catching up on email. Finally it was time to board the plane to Reykjavik, Iceland. I don’t think it had even occurred to me that we were going to a new country that we had never visited before or that our trip in the United States was coming to an end.