Farewell trip in Maine
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After the rainy graduation, the weather had not been recovered, but our plan still went on. We were headed to John’s and Margaret’s to have the packed lunch that we got from Bowdoin. John then took us to the airport where we rented a car for our trip. We planned to go to Acadia, the most-visited national park in Maine, and then go to Bar Harbor. It was a little weird that Emma and I had never been to Acadia even though we had lived in Maine for four years. (Well, it makes sense if we deduct a year and a half that I was not in Maine.
May 29
We got the car in the late afternoon, so we decided to have dinner in Portland first. We went to a Korean restaurant named N-to-Tail. We ordered Korean fried chickens and bibimbap, and they were very flavourful! After that, we went to Bangor, which was not an exciting spot. However, since it was close to Portland, we decided to stay there for a night at Super 8.
May 30
We drove up to Acadia in the morning using about 2 hours since we booked a time slot to enter mount Cadillac at 9 AM. We didn’t hike up mount Cadillac because of the weather, but it was a nice view up there. After taking many pictures, we then went around the Park Loop Road, which stops at beautiful sight-seeing spots, namely, the sand beach, the thunder hole, and Jordan Pond. The thunder hole was named after the sound of the wave hitting the shore very loudly. We finished around drive around the park around 1 in the afternoon. We weren’t hungry that much, so we decided to stop at more spots– the Bass Harbor head lighthouse. It was a lovely old lighthouse, but it was not as gorgeous as the one in Portland.
After visiting the lighthouse, we finally got a bit hungry and went to have lunch in the downtown Bar Harbor at a restaurant named A Pony and a Dog (pretty weird name, huh?). We had (16) buffalo wings, fish and chips, and clam chowders! Well, chowders are served at pretty much every restaurant in Bar Harbor. The weather in the late afternoon did not quite cooperate, so we were headed to the Anchorage hotel right after that. We spent 2 hours watching the hunger games two until we got hungry again. (What a life :P) For the dinner, we ordered takeouts from Chinese Joy, a Chinese restaurant downtown. We also had a cup of ice cream while waiting for the takeouts. (Not the one in the picture. That one we had on the day after!)
May 31
On the last morning of our stay in Bar Harbor, we started our day at Cafe This Way. The line was surprisingly long, especially on a rainy day. The restaurant served coffee for those who are lining up, which is pretty nice of them! When we got out table, we ordered two benedict eggs and a blueberry pancake. The food was delicious and fully energized us.
We then took a walk downtown and headed to the bar island. One special thing about the bar island is that when the tide is low, people can walk to the island and enjoy the animals on the island. We also walked to the island, but by the time we went back, the tide was getting higher, and we had to take off our shoes to walk. After we enjoyed a little walk to the bar island, we went back downtown to have some ice cream and buy some souvenirs. We got Maine blueberry tea for John and Margaret, and I got one for myself as well.
On the way back to Brunswick, where we stored our luggage, we made another stop at the Giant’s stairs in the Bailey island. I thought I had been there twice already while that was the first time for Emma and Poy! The stairs were amazing and terrifying as always. The big waves that kept hitting the shores made us feel so fragile, but they were also satisfying to watch. And that was the end of our trip to Maine. Although it was raining every day, the sceneries was still incredible. I’m surely going back to Maine again!!
After we found out that there are some flights from Willard (a regional airport in Champaign) that are inexpensive, we started flying out from here instaead of Chicago. We got a really good price of plane tickets to Seattle, so we decided to go to more national parks! The two parks that we visited were Mount Rainier and Olympic National Parks. We thought about going to North Cascade as well, but the time was limited so we planned to visit there next time. Visiting these two popular national parks in the fall was such a good choice–less crowd, nice weather, and fall foliage!
Midwest surprisingly offers us many national parks to visit all year round. One of the national parks near Illinois is the Mammoth Cave National Park in Cave City, Kentucky. We rented a car from Champaign and drove around 5 hours, excluding small stops in Indiana. We had never been to Kentucky before, and we believe that not many international students had been there. Plus, this was the first time we visited a cave in the US, and we start with the world’s longest known cave system!
We’d been thinking of visiting South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore and Badlands national park for almost a year. Then an opportunity came when one of our friends gave us a buy-one-get-one-free coupon from Delta. We did not hestitate even a bit in buying two tickets for a round trip from Chicago to Rapid City, SD. Although it was an impulsive trip, we had a lot of fun observing the wildlife in the great plains of South Dakota and North Dakota.
Although Poy graduated from the Scripps-Oxford joint Ph.D. program in Biochemistry for half a year and already started working at UIUC as a post-doctoral researcher, his graduation ceremony was held way later in May 2024. His family also came from Thailand to attend his graduation ceremony in San Diego. We then spent over a week afterward traveling around the west coast, including California, Arizona, and Nevada. It was my first time (and his family’s first time) doing a road trip in the west coast. We enjoyed a huge variety of natural wonders that the west coast has to offer.