Drive: Bar Harbor, ME to Manchester, NH

"Do something. If it doesn't work, do something else. No idea is too crazy." ~Jim Hightower

August 21: Blogged and worked on photos at Jon's brother's house in the morning while Jon took the van to get the oil and transmission fluid changed and checked the air in the tires. The trip has been a bit fast-paced for me to do that while driving between breweries. Jon picked up big chunky lobster salad sandwiches for lunch on his way home.

After lunch we headed south toward Highway 1 down the Maine coast. The photo at left above shows the new (left) and old (right) bridges over the Penobscot River in Bucksport, Maine. We didn't stop at the observatory because we had a long drive ahead of us.

Drove across bridges in many small Maine towns. Our view often looked like photo below right.
Then we determined we had enough time to stop for a nice dinner at a brewpub, so we pulled off the highway at Portsmouth, New Hampshire and looked for the Portsmouth Brewing Company.

At the beginning of this drive I'd finally set up my laptop facing the driver (Jon), running my DeLorme GPS software that I haven't had much luck running. We used that to find the Portsmouth Brewing Co. That sure helped as we arrived just as it was getting dark.

Portsmouth is a super cute old historic-looking town, so there were not a lot of parking places available. Luckily it was Tuesday and not a weekend, and we finally found two metered parking spots on the street where we could park our van-trailer combo.

At the pub Jon ordered the vegetable salad sandwich and I ordered the beef and chorizo chili, both good. We shared a nine-beer sampler set (photo left) and agreed that our favorite was the IPA. I will be spending a day here with brewer Tod Mott next Tuesday. Tod is a friend of mine and it is no surprise to me that he would make a well-balanced Pacific Northwest-style IPA.

Jon and I wished we could spend more time exploring quaint, cute Portsmouth, but it was dark and we still had to get to the Super 8 Motel in Manchester, New Hampshire. The photo below right was taken with no flash. The church's white tower was all lit up.

We used the GPS software to navigate our way out of town. It's not perfect, but it works OK. Mostly Jon used it to look at where our GPS location was on the plotted line to our destination. We parked the van-trailer in the Super 8 parking lot and brought a bottle of Ommegeddon up to the room to share. This motel is five minutes from Manchester Airport and they have a free airport shuttle, which Jon will take tomorrow morning.