We’re back to our cabin early this evening for a change. The rain has been pelting us since about lunchtime. The locals have been moaning about how dry it has been, so I’m glad for them. But it caused us to cut our day short.

That’s not all bad. A 60° rain makes for a good excuse to put on the comfy clothes and enjoy a hot ham and cheese with tomato soup. Not that I wouldn’t love lobster again, but enough is enough.

Besides, we’ve been pushing it pretty hard the last few days. Leave the cabin by 8am. Hike the trails. Explore the coast. Eat seafood. Ride through the mountains. Raid the junk barns. Eat more seafood. Then limp back to the cabin by 8pm. These 12-hour days are tough.

We’ve met a lot of non-Mainers on our travels. Our tour guide at Acadia was from Kentucky. We stopped along the Penobscot River and ran into some folks from Oklahoma. A lady from Nashville asked us if we were on the plane with them for the flight up. I guess she thought we looked familiar.

Most people who come to Maine from any distance normally take a flight into Boston and then rent a car. I suppose that makes us not so normal. Most people come for three or four days, too. Again, we are the abnormal ones at ten days, not counting travel.

But the way we look at it, we may never come this way again. Life is short. We are both very familiar with that concept. And knowing, firsthand, how short it can be and how fast it can change, our perspective on how we spend our time is maybe not what it would have been had we not learned this lesson.

We are not in a hurry. Every day we see where the road will take us. Don’t get me wrong. We have plans, but we’re not rushed to meet a deadline. We’re not trying to squeeze Maine into a schedule. If we want to sit at the coast a little longer, we sit. If we want to go back to the Penobscot River the next day, we go back.

When we got to Baxter State Park the other day, we only had one hike in mind. We checked in at the Togue Pond station and headed for the hills. As we pulled out, a car with two ladies was checking in behind us.

Baxter is located in what the Mainers would call the upper highland wilderness. The roads are dirt. They are narrow. If you meet another vehicle, you both have to hug the ditch to get by. The speed limit in the park is 15 mph.

We were maybe a mile down the first dirt road when I could see the two ladies in the small black sedan gaining on us. They were eating our dust. I could tell they wanted to get past us by the proximity of their front bumper to my Georgia license plate. So, at the first available wide spot, I pulled over. They were gone out of sight before the next turn.

We were just taking our sweet time. The mountain views were incredible. The beaver ponds and meadows were unbelievable. The scent of Hemlock and Spruce filled our senses like a pine candle at Christmas.

Ten miles in we got to the turn down toward Daicey Pond where we would make our 2.6-mile hike to see Big Niagara Falls. As we made the turn, here comes the same two ladies headed back out of the park blowing a dust trail behind them.

Now look. It took us 45 minutes to drive that far, two hours to make the hike, and these ladies were already headed back. No way they saw anything. No way they soaked up the afternoon. Maybe they had already visited earlier in the day, one left her camera behind, and they hurried back to get it. I don’t know but rushing through like your pants are on fire is no way to see Maine.

We’ve been here long enough that I’m catching on to the local accent. No, really!

We pulled up to the ticket window at Fort Knox State Park. This granite garrison was built along the western bank of the Penobscot River near Prospect, Maine. Union troops were stationed there during the Civil War, and US Troops during the Spanish-American War in 1898. It was never assaulted by enemy fire; I’m guessing because a fort in Maine is a little far from the Mason-Dixon and from Cuba.

Anyway, when I pulled up to the window and asked for two tickets, the lady says to me, “I’m guessing you’re from out-of-state?” I could tell she was messing with me.

“How could you tell?” I asked her.

“Just keep talking,” she said. “It’ll come to yah.”

That’s when I tried my dialect on her. “Oh, we come from down-east, near Bah Hahbah.”

“Yah,” she says to me. “Nobody from around heah says Bah Hahbah like that.”

Okay, so my Maine accent is pathetic.

One thing I didn’t expect when we planned this trip is how long it would take us to get from point A to point B. Other than down near the Massachusetts end of Maine, there’s only one interstate near us. It runs north and it plays out about the middle of the state. I think maybe it turns into a dirt road somewhere north of Baxter.

There are a number of state two-lane highways. but they’re concentrated mostly around the coast. If you go anywhere else, you’re gonna end up on what we would call county roads down home. They’re narrow, and winding, and torn up by the winters.

Take tomorrow for example. We plan to drive up to Moosehead Lake. The GPS says that it’s 89 miles away. Should be easy, right? Just hop on the road and you’ll be there before you know it. Wrong! It’s a 3-hour drive to Moosehead.

But you know what? We have SEEN Maine while driving these back roads. The fall color has not peaked yet, but there are pockets of color set against the green farmlands, which are set against the mountains; scenes that will take your breath away. And that’s exactly what we came to do.

We loved the trolley tour of Acadia. We definitely have loved the lobster. Excuse me, lobstah. But we have really loved just taking our time down some of the lonesome roads off the beaten path. That’s where we found Amish baked cookies. It’s where we found over a hundred wild turkey parading around the fields. That’s where we found the Liberty Tool Company and dug through piles of old hand tools.

There is one phrase the Mainers use quite often. A New England thing, maybe. A way of expressing approval.

Our waiter the other night down on the docks was Chad. We were discussing the menu with him and asked about the Captain’s Platter.

“Oh, yah. Ya cahn’t go bad wit’ dat one. The Captain’s Plattah, dat’s a wicked good one.”

So…just so ya know, Maine is a wicked good place to visit.