Maine

A quick consult with Google maps regarding the drive from Boston up to Freeport, ME indicated that it wasn't a very far distance - around 130 miles or 2 1/2 hours drive. We woke up around 7:30 and hit the road. Freeport has a very quaint Main Street district that is dotted with many bed & breakfast spots, food places, and retail shops - including several outdoorsy types of places that David was very excited about heading to. The first stop was LL Bean's flagship store - oldest & largest. Bean has a few store fronts here - the main store, a "Hunting & Fishing" store, a "Bike Boat & Ski" store, and an "Outlet" store. We checked a few out and generated several ideas for camping and wish list items.

I'm not sure what the intended purpose of the following display was, but I'm pretty sure that they want people to take the most ridiculous pictures in front of it...

The next stop was the North Face outlet store. We lucked out in that we arrived there during their "Sample Sale" - maybe an annual event? For this event, they sell many of their most popular items - clothing, jackets, shoes, backpacks, bags, etc -  for deep discounts. Most items are all the same sizes (medium for women's and men's clothing, size 7 for women's shoes, etc...) and I gather that they are the display items used at stores across the country. I scored a great backpack - an Ion 20, regularly priced at $89 - for $30!

David also got a great deal on a small Expedition Duffle Bag and a few shirts. From there, we continued to find deals at the Patagonia outlet store next door. We got great deals on a few base layer items (for ski trips & other cold weather activities) and I found a great black dress that might be my new favorite.

By the time we finished scouting out all of the deals, it was around 2 p.m. and we had worked up quite an appetite for lunch. After the Ethiopian/Ice Cream splurge yesterday evening in Boston, we decided to fast until we got to Maine and found lobster. To give a bit of insight, David arranged this whole trip to Maine almost exclusively for the purpose of tracking down the largest, freshest, most delicious lobster on the East Coast. He had been researching optional spots for days - and, after reading every yelp comment for all of Maine, he settled on a place called Three Sons Seafood located in the downtown area of Portland. The drive from Freeport to Portland is relatively short- less than 20 miles. We parked along a side street of the main drag in downtown Portland and set out on foot to find this place. It took a bit of poking around, but we finally found the place, down what resembled the combination of an alley and a pier. It was a big metal building with faded paint and minimal signage. There were 3 picnic tables outside and 2 signs. The place was very unassuming, to say the least. We walked in and were immediately met with huge water tanks/boxes with lids. Progressing along led us to a line of patrons - about 5-8 people long. We joined the line and noticed a fairly large chalk board detailing all of the seafood offerings. All items were available fresh - as you would get at a seafood market - but most items could also be ordered steamed for 50 cents extra per pound. We decided to each order a lobster steamed (2 lbs for me and 3 lbs for David). The girl taking our order walked over to tanks & pulled out each live lobster, weighing it on a scale and then tossing it into a mesh bag for steaming. We also ordered mussels, scallops, and melted butter for dipping. They rang us up & told us to come back in about 20 minutes.

We walked around a little to waste time and across the street to grab a couple of beers, then back to pick up our food. We had decided to eat at the picnic tables outside and documented our experience in pictures...

Carefully handling the bag of goodies at the picnic table...

I'm in absolute awe over the size of these suckers...

I just remembered where I am and that David is taking pictures...here is my surprised face...

After regaining my composure, I pull David & a lobster in for a group picture...

As David was breaking into his lobster, he turned to tell me something & realized that his lobster claw was almost as big as my head...

The meat was soooooooooo delicious that I fell completely head over heels in love...David tolerated a bit of PDA between the lobster & I...

Here's David trying to show his lobster claw a little affection...this is pretty typical of his variety of aggressive form of showing love =)

Here's the carnage...

One thing to note is the threat of aggressive seagulls that are the size of small dogs...this one attempted to stake its claim to my lobster (or my leg, I'm not sure which one...). I distracted it with a small bit of lobster guts thrown onto the ground...

One more interesting note that I am including for all those people who are of the misconception that crawfish are somehow less desirable or clean than lobsters...we took a picture of the huge digestive track that my lobster had running down its back - similar to, but much larger than those found in crawfish - indicative that these guys must also mull around in muddy environments similar to their smaller counterparts.

Although we were virtually comatose from excessive quantities of seafood, we elected to push on and drove for a couple of hours to Wells State Park in Massachusetts for the night.