Day 3 & 4: Brattleboro, VT to Portland, ME

We made the best of the Holiday Inn Express breakfast (but no factory cooked eggs!) and got going to the east. The bad air quality from the Canadian forest fires was still with us but we drove out of it soon.

We stopped at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, NH. It is a small museum with a nice collection. We again used our Menil Museum membership, which gives us free access to museums that are part of NARM (North American Reciprocal Museums).

We got to the Atlantic Ocean in southern New Hampshire at Hampton Beach, which was a happening beach. Crowded, no parking, etc. But as we moved north there were only a few small beaches as the shore was mostly rocky. And there were great ocean side houses along the way.

Our Road Food book advised a stop at Lobster Pound at the town of Rye Harbor. We did and it was very good. We ate on picnic tables at the water. It looked like it might rain - but it didn’t.

Rye, NH

We stopped in Portsmouth, NH which had a great downtown. It was full of a variety of local businesses, and on this day business looked good! Our waitress there advised us to avoid the lobster in New Hampshire, and wait to eat it in Maine. (She was from Maine).

Instead of a “Welcome to Maine” sign, we got this! You definitely knew you were in lobster country. Kittery, ME

Now Day 4 in Portland, it was raining when we got up in our Air B&B. And it rained all day, sometimes pretty hard. So we started at the Portland Museum of Art to stay inside. It is also a great little museum and today had a good photography show of of the Maine Media Workshops past students and faculty.

Portland Museum of Art.

Rainy downtown Portland. After the museum we drove up to LL Bean to shop and stay out of the rain. It was packed. Fun to look at all of the stuff there, but way too crowded.