More Maine Trip

On Tuesday it was time to check out of one hotel into another.
Since my mother is no longer mobile enough to come to Vegas to visit us any longer part of this trip was planned around bringing mom to the new casino that had opened up in Oxford, about an hour away.
So we packed up and left the Best Western in Waterville, picked up mom in Augusta and made our way to the Oxford/Poland Springs area. It was too early to check into the hotel so we headed straight for the Oxford Casino.

It was average size for an Indian casino. Slots and table games. We started Mom out with a hundred dollar bankroll with the promise of another hundred if she lost the first. The catch was that anything she made in addition to the first hundred, she got to keep.

We turned her loose and we played some slots and craps before rejoining her and checking her sugar level. It was kinda low so we set off in search of a restaurant we read about and were excited to try, only to find they were closed on Tuesdays.
Bummed, we checked into the hotel, got a restaurant recommendation from the clerk and then got settled into our rooms.

 
We rested for about an hour and then headed to Gray to Cole Farms to get some grub. The place was perfect for us! A real locals place that makes their own stuff. I got the baked Haddock and so did mom while Rob got the homemade chili and we got the coconut shrimp as an appetizer. It was all fantastic!

   
From the restaurant we headed back to the casino for more gaming fun. We all ended up winning in the end with mom getting to keep the 75 bucks she won. She was pretty happy. We grabbed some sandwiches from the snack bar at the casino and headed back to the lodge to sleep on the lumpy mattresses.

On Wednesday we woke and headed straight back to Mom’s house.  I think I may have taken a nap at that point but my memory of this afternoon is kind of fuzzy at this point.  Eventually we ended up at Red Barn to get our Lobster baskets for the evening.  We got three Lobster baskets as well as a mixed seafood basket and a pint of seafood stew.  Oh and a vanilla shake.  It was ready in a jiffy and we headed out to my friend Katherine’s house.

Of all the people I have ever met, I think Katherine is the person I have known the longest that I am still friends with.  We’ve known each other since Jr. High and while we haven’t always been in touch, whenever we get together, be it in person or over the phone it is like no time has passed.  She organized our Wednesday night get together and it ended up being even better than I had hoped.  What started out as the promise of Lobster baskets and fiddleheads with her family turned into a mini high school reunion including two people that I haven’t seen since high school.

The night turned out to be just what I needed.  A nice break from my mom and even my husband(he played guitar on the front porch while chatting with Katherine’s husband) while I got to let loose and laugh.  Perfection in friends, fiddleheads, lobster baskets and margaritas.

I slept very good that night.

On Thursday we allowed ourselves time to sleep in and then headed out to my Auntie Tee’s house in Portland.

We knew when we were first planning this trip that we wanted to do a lot of things so we put some research into the goings on around the state.  One thing that we were particularly excited about was a one night only burlesque show in Portland.  Rob has done music for several burlesque shows put on by a local theater in Monterey.  That has been our only experience with it so we were looking forward to seeing someone elses take on it.

My Aunt Lynda lives in Portland and had generously extended an invitation to stay with her if we wanted when we were first planning the trip so it worked out perfectly.  Just for clarification, her name is Lynda, she goes by Lee and when my brother and I were little we couldn’t say Auntie Lee so we called her Auntie Tee instead.  The name has stuck all these years.

We arrived to Auntie Tee making us homemade beef stew and rolls.  After almost a week of eating out everyday, this was a very welcome sight.  We hung out on her porch and chatted for a bit.  My Aunt lives in a neighborhood with many oak trees.  As a result there are many squirrels running around.  It was this distraction that caused and actual “SQUIRREL!” moment for my mother.  She was talking about something or other and in mid sentence, she literally stopped and shouted: “Oh! A Squirrel!”  This drove Rob and I into tears of laughter because while it is a common joke among my easily distratctable friends to shout Squirrel when they get sidetracked, we had never actually seen someone do it for real.  With an actual squirrel.

Once we recovered we had a delicious dinner of the stew and then my cousins Sherry and Cindy showed up to entertain us with their bickering  before we headed out to the show.

The burlesque show was a benefit for the arts theater that was housing it.  It had some local burlesque groups as well as individual acts.  It was hosted by MC Gay Jay and he was assisted by a very entertaining mime that cleaned up after the acts.

We very much enjoyed the show.  All of the acts were good, if a little under-practiced for a couple of them, but it made for a delightful evening.

Back home we had some leftover stew and went to bed.

Our original plan was for Rob and I to leave mom with Auntie Tee in the morning and take off for Old Orchard Beach.  We hadn’t visited there since one of our first visits back home.  We had no reason to go there other than just to fill some time and since we were pretty tired we decided to nix it and just head home.

After Auntie Tee made us a delish breakfast of course.

We got home and I played around with the Priceline app again and found an even cheaper hotel than the last time in Augusta for that night so Rob and I merely repacked out suitcases and headed out to the Best Western off of Civic Center Drive.  It was a fairly new hotel(by that I mean that it didn’t exist when I lived there) but our room was TINY!    Easily half the size of the room we had at the Best Western in Waterville.  I joked that it was the room they saved for the Priceline cheapskates that didn’t want to pay full price.  Still, it was a real bed(not like the air mattress we had been sleeping on most of the week) and it had a pool.  Of course, it was an outdoor pool and the weather had finally started to get cool, but that didn’t stop me from getting into it and freezing my butt off soon after check in.  I’m on vacation damn it and there is a pool!

Anyhoo, we got some room service from the attached restaurant called “Rooster’s”.  We were told they were famous for their wings so Rob got some, he wasn’t that impressed.  I got a haddock wrap that was okay but overall we weren’t thrilled with the dinner.  Good thing we had some ice cream that we had bought to sustain us.

At some point during that day Katherine contacted me to change our plans to get together and go to the Clinton Fair from Sunday to the following day, Saturday because there was a chance of rain on Sunday.   That was fine with us so I called my friend Kimmy(another friend that I have known almost as long as Katherine and have the same type of longstanding friendship with) and told her we would be in town and we made arrangements to meet at Governer’s for breakfast.

To Be Continued!