Old Orchard Beach, Maine

 August 28, 2026

The drive to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia was pretty uneventful.  The route took me north of the southern shore, so my drive was mostly through dense pine forest.  The sheer amount of wilderness in this small part of Canada overwhelms me.  It is stunning to drive in such beautiful country and experience it as pristine; not marred by buildings and billboards.

I got to Yarmouth at around 5 PM, and was assigned the same room at the Mermaid Inn that I had last time.  There was still sun to sit in, so I took my chair out of my car and placed it next to my motel room door and sat in the sun for a while.  I noticed a Mexican restaurant across the street that I hadn't seen the last time I was there, and it had a flag declaring it was open.  So I crossed the street for dinner.    

    It was a small setup, run by an immigrant from Mexico City.  She had moved to Canada and became a citizen.  She sounded very proud when she told me this, and said she was so happy she moved there.  The setup was like a Chipotle-- you could order a burrito or a bowl, and fill it with her homemade ingredients.  It was such a lovely surprise to eat authentic Mexican flavors in a Canadian fishing village with very few other eateries to offer besides pub fare and fast food.  I sat at an outdoor picnic table and watched the sun set over the harbor.

I got up early this morning to eat the hotel breakfast (cooked to order!) and catch the ferry back to the US.  These ferries are ENORMOUS and carry semis and RVs, as well as cars, motorcycles, bikes, and walkers.  The ride was pretty much the same as the others, although I slept through a lot of it.  It was a three-and-one-half-hour trip.

Once in Bar Harbor Maine again, I started my drive to Old Orchard Beach, Maine.  Most of the drive was interstate, so there wasn't much to say about it.  I got to the Old Orchard Beach Inn around 5PM, after three hours of driving.  I was pretty tired.  I sat in my room and thought about not venturing out again.

But my sense of adventure got the best of me, and I walked the half mile downhill to the beach.  And what a delight it was! 

A huge expanse of sand, an early 20th-century pier, an amusement park, and all the beachy stores you find on any boardwalk.  I've never been to Coney Island, but I felt like it must be something like a bigger version Old Orchard Beach.  A little walk through history in a mid-century beach destination.

AND I realized that in the last year I had set foot in the Atlantic Ocean in Portugal, Canada, and the United States!

My hotel is an Inn that was built in 1730.  It's got beautiful bones.  I have a lovely large room underneath the main staircase.  I can just imagine all of the people who have stayed in this place over the years, who drank in the beach and the sun, and ate lobster to their hearts' content. 

AND something else I had to make myself do.  Once I got back from my walk to the beach, I wondered if I was hungry enough to go out to dinner.  But it's my last night in Maine, and really, you have to eat a lobster.  So I scrolled through Yelp and picked what looked to be the best option:  an "order at the window and sit down" kind of place called The Lobster Claw Pound and Restaurant.

Because I wasn't overly hungry, I ordered one pound of lobster (it's great they allowed me to choose how big my lobster was), mashed potatoes, coleslaw, and a glass of chardonnay.  The lobster came out quick.  It was REALLY good, and not too much food.  I'm so glad I decided to go out to eat!  And only $33!

Tomorrow I take the tollway to Albany, New York, and meet my friend Penney (a dear friend from grad school) at an Airbnb.  She happened to be at some occasion near Albany on the same day that I was driving through.  I tell you, this trip has been filled with so many events of synchronicity.  There were so many times that I didn't have a clear idea of what to do, and I asked the universe to help me, and so many times the results of the situation were better than anything I could have planned. This is something I need to ponder on, perhaps I'll write more about it later.