Maine-ly Travel Tips

Eat your heart out, Peter Jackson.

So here we are in Maine. What a place. It took us about 12 hours of airports and 4 hours of cars, but we are here. Man, it’s pretty. This here is sort of a “travel diary”, but I thought I’d throw together some “Travel Tips” and other info I’ve gathered regarding Maine and Mainers just in case any of you ever visit. The first section is called:

This dude loves log

Stuff Mainers Like.

1. Wood: Mainers like wood a lot. We saw no fewer than eight signs for things ranging from “Camp Wood” to “Holiday Wood” to “The Wood Doctor”. That meant we got to make the same joke no fewer than eight times. You know, that joke?  Even the air smells like wood up here. Maybe it’s all the forests, or maybe there’s a PineSol factory. Either way, it smells real good.
2. Water: It’s everywhere! If it’s not the ocean, it’s a pond; if it’s not a pond, it’s a river; if it’s not a river, it’s indoor plumbing. Who knew Mainers would be so crazy about water? It’s pretty weird, especially for us Texans who practically live in a desert, albeit one with automatic sprinkler systems and drying-up aquifers.
   

   Really, kid? Lobster AND ice cream?

3. Ice Cream: This one was just inexplicable. I mean, here we are, driving through the rain and it’s 64 degrees out and we must have seen three ice cream places in each town we drove through, which was about 20 so that’s about 60 ice cream places in an area who’s average temperature is less than 50 degrees! Maybe we should give Maine ice cream a try. Is it better than BlueBell? More on that later.
4. Beavers, Lobsters, and other “wild life”: All I can say is, they’re hardly “wild” when you keep them locked up on a big island. Mount Desert Island is probably like Alcatraz for animals. We’ll check that out tomorrow and maybe do an expose on it.
5. Making puns with the word “Maine”: As in, “Maine-ly Sewing”, “Maine-ly Maine Gift Shop”, “Mainely A Cappella”, “Mainely Hawaii”, and “Maintenance Contractors of Maine”. Okay, we get it, y’all have a really cool name for your state. All we can do is: “No new Texas!”

I doubt they are really singing lobsters

The sign says it all

I’ll keep you posted on more stuff I find out about Maine. In the “maine” time, keep it real, my “maine” man!

Restaurant Review: Red Lobster (by Golden Corral on Lamar)

by Hilah and Mark

The Broken Spoke was closed

Hilah refereed a soccer game earlier in the evening

Mark sez:

Red Lobster's cross has flags all over it

When I asked the waiter to take our photo, I told him it was our anniversary. Totally unneccessary. He had already taken the camera from me and was backing into position to snap the shot. Here he was, some earnest dude working hard at one of the shittiest restaurants in Austin, and I’m lying to him about our anniversary, which, incidentally, is May 28^th. I felt terrible.

Inner turmoil from lying to the waiter

I considered coming clean and apologizing when he brought our food, but why insult him further with that unneccessary, awkward scene? It surely made no difference to him whether I was a liar or not. I’ll bet he was making mental notes of our attire, so he could he regale his buddies with tales of the worst-dressed anniversary date he had seen all week. He was probably figuring how to swipe the camera so he would have some proof. Still, he brought out our key lime pie with a candle in it.

Cool-ass key lime pie

We put sunglasses on the pie and took another photo.

Hilah sez:

Hilah feeding me my cool pill

I don’t know what Mark is talking about. Our anniversary is January 25. I thought I was dressed very nice last night (even if he had a fucked-up outfit on) and my blackened red snapper was terrific. The baked potato was the best I’ve had in a long time, and the broccoli was perfectly steamed and hot. The candle that our waiter put in our key lime pie, while thoughtful and pretty, unfortunately increased the temperature of the pie to above optimal key lime pie temperature.  The shades didn’t cool it off any, either.

Next Time: Golden Corral (by Red Lobster on Lamar)

Buyer's remorse

We thought it was a barometer