Hurricane Fiona

Originally, we were planning to go to Florida in September. Because of how often hurricanes pass come near Florida in September, I decided we should go in May instead. We experienced almost no rain during our two-week trip in May. I didn't expect a hurricane to be a factor in a trip to New England in September. I was wrong. This morning as we were eating a continental breakfast at our motel, I received an email from the cruise company stating that today's whale watching cruise had been cancelled. This four-hour cruise was to be the main activity of our day. The kids were on one other whale watch cruise in September 2016 in Massachusetts. Sitting at breakfast I tried to make new plans for our day. Even though it was raining, we still walked the one-mile Marginal Way Walk along the coast in Ogunquit as that was the reason that we stayed in that town last night. I'm sure it would have been more beautiful if it wasn't a rainy, dreary day, but it was still pretty, and we got some exercise. Rainboots would have been greatly appreciated. We did make use of three rain ponchos and two umbrellas.

After we finished our coastal walk, we drove to Portland where we toured the Portland Observatory that was built in 1807 and is the last surviving maritime signal station in the United States. Next, we toured the boyhood home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I had looked for places to visit in Portland, Augusta, Bangor, etc. but hadn't found many options because some required reservations be made more than a day in advance, others were not open on Thursdays, some had recently become permanently closed, etc. This day definitely didn't go as planned. We were all really looking forward the whale/dolphin watching cruise, but we tried to make the best of a very rainy day. On our drive from Portland to Bar Harbor, we stopped to have dinner at a Denny's in Augusta. The weather is supposed to be much nicer tomorrow while we explore Acadia National Park. I'm hoping we have a great day because adding this destination into our itinerary definitely added to the number of miles we are driving on this trip. My earlier itinerary for this trip didn't include Acadia, but then I decided that if we were driving to the southern part of Maine, we should make the extra effort to visit what is considered to be one of the top ten National Parks in the United States. We were spoiled in that the weather didn't really interfere with our plans during our 3+ week vacation last fall or our 2-week trip in May. The weather has been a much bigger factor on other trips such as our trip to Grand Caymen in May 2012. I am going to attempt to include another whale watching cruise in one of our future vacations (probably when we visit the Northwest or Hawaii). As of today, we are down to nine states left to visit! Hopefully by this time next year we'll be down to our last three (Hawaii, Alaska, and Louisiana).