From Deer Isle, Me. to Quincy, Mass.

Quincy John Adams' house
Originally uploaded by thegreatplotnik.

The Plotniks hugged The Crow and Finch goodbye, then got lost three times on their way from Deer Isle to Highway One. Each time The Great Plotnik came to a dead end with the road going either left or right, with no highway markings whatsoever, with water on both sides, green grass and cows in the fields, and farmhouses that looked like all the other farmhouses, he would stop the car and wait for someone to come up behind him. He'd ask the driver of that car or truck how to get to Route One, to head South to Camden.

"Camden? Oh, yah just take this heah road, and when you get to the fawk in the road, tuhn left. Ya can't miss it."

This was never even close to the truth. The fork in the road led immediately to another fork in the road, with water on both sides, green grass and cows in the fields. Plot would have to stop again at the new intersection and wait for another car or truck to come up behind him.

Eventually he found Route One, turned left, and drove South through Belfast, Searsport and numerous other prosperous looking Maine seaside towns, each with bustling commercial districts, inns and cottages for rent, lobster shacks and book stores, used clothing shops and cafes and the occasional boat yard and commercial harbor, until they got to Camden. They'd heard good things about Camden.

But Camden was the same: prosperous, bustling, lobster, cafe, inn. So were Bath, and Brunswick, maybe, though the whole coast was starting to blend into one large coffeshopinnlobster, and the first two of the Rocks: Rockport and Rockville.

Rockland, however, was different. Rockland has the fabulous Farnsworth Museum, which is devoted to the art of the Wyeths, father N.C. and son Andrew and grandson Jamie. Andrew Wyeth's grand daughter herself gave a tour of one gallery and it was a truly fascinating journey through tempera and splash water color. Plot is a fan from here on out, and one reason is that Andrew Wyeth is 89 years old, still painting and still denying he had anything other than passing artistic interest in those two or three volupturous nude women of whom he painted hundreds of portraits, hah hah, right.

Back in the car and several more hours of more prosperous Maine beach towns, ya de da de da, ending in Freeport, which is where God shops, when God is looking for 15% to 25% off. Across from the gigantic L.L. Bean retail store are outlets for Bass, Anne Klein, Abercrombie and Fitch, Timberland, Clark, Reebok and a zillion others, selling shoes, leather goods, outdoor and indoor clothing...actually, Plotnik doesn't think these stores are selling their wares at all, but instead the entire town is selling shopping. People shop because they came to shop. They don't care what they buy as long as they buy something.

L.L. Bean's main store is in Freeport too, so Plot bought a t-shirt and Duck bought a sweater, each for ten bucks (marked down from twenty, hoozah woopty doopty). They had a $2.75 single scoop ice cream cone which was overpriced by maybe $1.90.

Another hour and the Inn at St. John in Portland, Maine was reached, advertised as a Bed and Breakfast. The Bed part was accurate.

Portland is a little bit like Saint Plotniko, if Saint Plotniko still had a working seaport, was completely flat and was frozen solid for six months each year. It's got as many restaurants per capita as St.P., plus that 'je ne sais lobstah' artsy feel. But...no. Plotnik doesn't do 6 month winters.

The toilet overflowed in the Inn at St. John. It wasn't pretty. The 'Breakfast' component of 'B&B' was packaged bagels, plastic knives and styrofoam coffee cups. Don't believe everything you browse.

This morning Plot and Duck drove all the way to Quincy, Massachusetts (passing by, but refusing to stop in Kennebunk, Maine, where George Bush lived his unexamined young life, while learning to pretend to be a Texan). They spent a fantastic three hours at the Adams Monument, which is run by the forest service. They saw the house, built in 1680, where John and John Quincy Adams were born, then walked through the new home into which the Adamses moved in 1788 when their fortunes improved. They saw the church where John, Abigail and John Quincy and his wife worshiped, they sat in their very pew, they walked through the graveyard where all the early town of Quincy was buried, and they left feeling like they'd floated over hallowed colonial ground.

Now, they're at a very nice Comfort Inn at the airport in Warwick, R.I. Tonight they'll return the car, eat more pasta in red sauce, and tomorrow, finally, with wind beneath their wings, but no liquids or gels, arrive home, where a few green vegetables and something with fiber await them.