Remember when I went to Boston…

The long overdue Recap of one August weekend in Boston.

Angel picked me from Logan and we headed straight to Toad in Cambridge. We ordered two dark and stormys and when no further explanation of the beverage was required I was instantly tempted to move there permanently. In DC, bars don’t serve this delicious concoction and asking for one usually results in a lady-stop-wasting-my-time-here’s-a-budlight look. It’s a shame. The two of us hadn’t seen each other since our impromptu epic trip to Germany more than a year ago. And being mutual phone haters we hadn’t chatted on the phone for a really long time. Unsurprisingly, we sat at the bar and drank and gabbed till closing.

Full and happy, we gingerly stumbled through the quiet streets of Somerville to Angel’s 4th(I think) floor apartment. With each flight of stairs, it kept getting hotter and hotter. When we finally entered her apartment, I was reminded of a quote from a friend; it felt like Vietnam. I crashed on the futon in the living room; the breeze kept me from sweating away my dark and stormys. As per plan, we woke up early the next morning for a 4.5 mile run around Charles river, Harvard square, and Somerville. Angel is perhaps the only friend I know who holds me accountable on drunken promises of an early run. (Side story: In Munich she successfully got me out of bed after I had stayed up till 4:00am drinking Augstinerbrau (sp?) at the hostel bar. She said it took a while, but she is persistent). A shower, coffee, and a few phone calls later, we decided to ditch our plans to go to Martha’s Vineyard and instead settled for a road tip to Maine. The plan was to leisurely drive through coastal towns, stopping for local food fare, to our final destination, Freeport where we would camp out for the night.

The road trip turned out better than planned. We drove through York, Ogunquit, and Kennebunkport, before stopping for dinner in Portland, Maine. And by dinner I mean a stop at The Standard Baking Co. and more dark and stormys at Gritty’s. We had planned to leave Portland by 7:30pm giving us ample time to drive to our campsite and set up camp. Unfortunately, the weather turned and we both agreed that watching the storm from Gritty’s was a better idea than trying to navigate in it. Around 9:00pm we had done enough watching and decided to just leave. After driving down some spooky roads and dirt trails, we eventually made it to the Recompence Shore Campgrounds, in Wolfe’s Neck Farm . Not having made a reservation, we quietly drove around to find a campsite that wasn’t taken. The rain was beating down our backs, it was dark, and we were full of ginger beer and rum. Setting up a tent in these conditions can be challenging. But we persevered. The resulting one-person tent borrowed from Angel’s friend seemed too small after all that work. We weren’t sure the both of us could fit in. But, fit we did and drifted to sleep in no time.

We rose early the next morning and couldn’t get over how beautiful everything looked. Having zero provisions to make breakfast, we packed our stuff and drove away in search of coffee and food. We were certain to find some at Wolfe’s Neck Farm. I guess we were expecting a farmer’s wife with a simmering pot of porridge and slap-in-the-face coffee. Unfortunately it looked like no one was awake except the animals. We ate whatever leftovers we had in the car and trespassed around the farm trails. Apparently, the punishment for trespassing was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. We turned around quickly and headed outta there.

Our final destination in our final destination was the LL Bean store. We thought we’d get there at 9:00, right when the stores open and claim the best parking spot. We arrived at 8:57am to a completely full parking lot. We later discovered that the store never sleeps. It’s open 24 hours. After spending part of my retirement savings at LL Bean, and some of the other stores in Freeport, we headed back to Boston.

We said our goodbyes over local ice cream and promised to call each other soon. An epic weekend this certainly was. But then that’s not really a surprise.