New England Road Trip (Conclusion)
Traci and I got on the road in the morning. This was the only sunny day we had during our 5-day New England road trip. In fact, we actually used the air condition in the car during part of the drive. For the remainder of our road trip, we would have schedules that we needed to stick to. We needed to find our way to Wells, Maine before 7 PM so that Traci could make it to the packet pickup for the Maine Coast Half Marathon that she would be running the next day. The drive from Augusta to Wells would have been about 1.5 hours, but as I mentioned earlier, we had a planned detour through New Hampshire on the way. We wanted to see the American Classic Arcade Museum (ACAM) which is located in Laconia, New Hampshire. This meant we had a little over a 2.5-hour drive between Augusta and Laconia and then about a 1.5-hour drive between Laconia and Wells.
The drive from Augusta, Maine to Laconia, New Hampshire was through mainly rural land. The roads in New Hampshire felt more rural than Maine; however, New Hampshire had more interesting scenery with its green mountains and beautiful lakes - especially Lake Winnipesaukee as we approached Laconia. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Laconia is a tourist destination because of its lakes. In fact, its nickname is "The City of Lakes". It is popular with boaters. As we drove through the city, the sight of rental properties, B&Bs, restaurants, mini-golf, go-karts, and more had me starting to get into vacation mode.
Lake Winnipesaukee
I was a little thrown off when we arrived at our destination. I was expecting to see a sign that said "American Classic Arcade Museum". Instead, I saw a sign that read "Funspot". Uh oh! I thought maybe I should had done another round of itinerary confirmations before making this detour. Had the museum closed like the other attractions we initially planned to visit on this road trip?
Traci and I entered Funspot. It kind of reminded me of Dave&Busters with its skeeball, air hockey, and other games. I was surprised by how many kids I saw on this school day. The kids were running around with handfuls of tickets that they won from the games. Thinking I had oops'ed with this stop, I apologized to Traci and said that at least we have a memorable travel story - then, I saw it. There was a sign indicating the American Classic Arcade Museum is located on the third floor! We made our way up there and saw a large room full of arcade games. The museum has over 300 classic arcade games along with their backstories and other anecdotes. The games are grouped by their maker: Atari, Taito, Sega, Nintendo, Midway, etc... There is a sizable collection of pinball machines also. You are allowed to play almost all of the games on display. I did not have intentions of playing since my days of playing arcade games are long behind me; that is until a saw a game that instantly transported my mind back to my teenage years at the arcade in the mall - Crazy Climber! I just had to give it a try. I put a dollar in the token dispensing machine and got four tokens (Lol! Big spender - I know). I gave Traci two tokens so that she could relive her childhood memories of playing Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man. As for me, I took my two tokens and headed over to Crazy Climber.
Crazy Climber is a game in which you use the two joysticks to climb a building while avoiding closing windows, people dropping flowerpots, a pooping bird, King Kong, and other crazy obstacles. I gave the game a try and lost my three lives in a short amount of time. Next, I put my last token into a driving game that used to fascinate me back in the day. Yikes! The machine took my token but never moved off the demo screen. I pushed the button to return my token. To my surprise, a bunch of tokens began to pour out of the machine as if I had hit the jackpot on a slot machine! I split my bounty with Traci - so began our hour-long journey back down Memory Lane to our childhood days of playing arcade games.
We explored the other floors of Funspot. It has a mindboggling array of attractions to keep you occupied: bowling alley, bumper cars, slot machines (dispenses tickets instead of cash), mini golf, etc... There is a bar on the third floor for adults. There is a fast-food eatery on the first floor. This place made sense when I realized that Laconia is a vacation destination.
I had to keep an eye on the time so that we could make it to Wells, Maine in time for Traci to pick up her race packet for the Maine Coast Half Marathon. Despite my initial fear that I had blundered with this stop at Funspot, I felt a sense of relief as we got on the road and Traci said with a smile, "That was fun."
The drive to Wells, Maine from Laconia, New Hampshire took us a little longer than 1.5 hours. We encountered a traffic jam on the 2-laned roads of Wells as people were making their way to the packet pickup location. As we inched our way through the traffic, I realized that like Bar Harbor and Laconia, Wells too is a vacation destination. The attraction in Wells is its beaches. It was definitely not beach weather when we were there. As a result, many of the restaurants, hotels, mini-golfs, and other tourist attractions had not yet opened for the season.
The race packet pickup took place on a grassy and sandy field at Wells Harbor Community Park. It was an organized and straightforward process. Like other packet pickups we've attended in the past, there were vendors on-site selling clothing and items geared towards runners. Even though it was a mild, sunny day, the wind made things challenging for everyone.
In case you have not noticed by now, we stayed at a different hotel each night of the road trip. Our hotel for this leg of the trip was Holiday Inn Express Wells-Ogunquit-Kennebunk (Room #320). It was located in walking distance from a grocery store and a few restaurants. I had already checked out the menu of several Italian restaurants in the area when putting together this road trip itinerary. Distance runners like to eat pasta the day before a race in order to carb-load. Traci and I chose Angelina's. We know from experience that every Italian restaurant in the region of a distance run is going to be packed; therefore, Traci was sure to make our reservation at Angelina's as soon as possible.
We drove to Angelina's since it was located a little over three miles from our hotel. We had made a 7 PM dinner reservation. We were hungry well before then; therefore, we decided to try our luck by arriving an hour early. Welp, that didn't work. As we approached Angelina's, we could see a line of cars waiting to turn into the small parking lot. The restaurant did not have enough parking for all the cars; therefore, they were doing valet parking. I asked one of the overwhelmed valet attendants if there was somewhere else we could park. He gladly told me that we could park at a closed bank about a block away. Seeing that there were groups of people waiting outside the restaurant for their seating buzzer to ring, Traci and I decided to abandon the idea of eating early. Instead, we drove to a nearby shopping center where we bought a Maine refrigerator magnet to add to our collection. The souvenir shops had not opened for the season yet, so I ended up buying our magnet from a Maine department store chain called Reny's.
We made our way back to Angelina's for our 7 PM dinner reservation. I took the valet's advice and parked in the closed bank's parking lot. The restaurant was packed. There were people waiting inside and outside the restaurant. Despite having a reservation, Traci and I still had to wait 30 minutes before we were seated. The hostess seemed completely overwhelmed. She kept apologizing for the wait. I assured her that it was okay. We are used to this the day before a distance run.
We were finally seated around 7:30 PM. I was worried that we might not receive good service or good food due to the number of patrons the restaurant was trying to accommodate that evening. Happily, I had nothing to worry about. It was another homerun for a Maine restaurant. Our waiters were personable and patient. The food was plentiful and amazing. Once again, we were not able to finish our plates. Once again, I did not want to throw away what I could not eat. Once again, we left with doggy bags.
Back at the hotel, Traci and I went through our rituals that we follow the night before a race. No, I am not a runner, but I go through my spectator ritual of reading race details to determine how I am going to get Traci to the start line, where I can find parking, where is the best place to take a picture of Traci as she runs by, etc... Traci, on the other hand, concentrates on hydrating the night before a race. She also does her flat runner photo; that is, she lays her running outfit on the bed and takes a photo. Sometimes she posts several flat runner pictures online and asks her friends to decide what she should wear.
The next day was race day. Race day always starts with anxiety. Obviously, Traci is focused on getting her mind right for the 13.1 miles she is about to run. I am worried about getting her to the start line on time. We woke up at 4 AM. The logistics of the Maine Coast Half Marathon were surprisingly complex for being a small town. It was not as complex as the marathons that Traci has done in Chicago and New York City, but it was not possible to drop Traci off at the start line. I had to drop her off at one of the shuttle pickup locations.
It was a brisk morning with temperatures in the 40's (Fahrenheit). The thing that had me mesmerized was how red the sky turned during sunrise. This beauty was short-lived because the rain began not long after that. The cold and rain were good running weather for the runners but miserable for spectators. Fortunately, mile 11 of the racecourse went in front of our hotel. This allowed me to enjoy the complimentary breakfast at the Holiday Inn before going outside to take a picture of Traci as she ran by. On the flip side, it was impossible for me to move the car from the hotel parking lot because of all the runners running by. I saw several people waiting in line to exit the parking lot in their car without any success.
As the race continued, I realized that picking Traci up after the race was going to be a challenge. She said that the lines for the shuttles were ridiculously long. There was no way for me to get to some of the shuttle pickups because of the traffic and road closures. I was relieved when Traci called me and told me that some of her running friends were going to give her a ride back to the hotel. Whew! Traci's involvement in her local running clubs and national running clubs works to her advantage. It seems no matter where she runs, she can always find one or more of her running peeps. As for me, I was able to use my unexpected free time to log into my Saturday morning French conversation group session to practice my French.
Traci eventually arrived back at our room. She had done well. She had managed to shave two minutes off of her average half marathon time from last year. With that, Maine became state #31 in her quest to run a half marathon in all 50 states. She remarked that the Maine Coast Half Marathon was a strange race in that there was no formal start. She said that when the shuttle arrived at the starting area, everyone got off the bus and started running. Huh!
Anyway, Traci got cleaned up. She ate the breakfast that I brought her from the breakfast buffet. We packed up, loaded up the car, and were on our way to the next destination - Providence, Rhode Island. We had a two-hour drive in front of us. We needed to get to Providence so that Traci could pick up her race packet before 5 PM. She would be running the half marathon in the Providence Rhode Races event the next day. This would be the first time that she ran back-to-back half marathons. It was tbd as for if she would do something like this again.
We ran into traffic as we were passing through Boston, but we made it to Providence, Rhode Island in plenty of time for Traci to pick up her race packet. Rhode Island is the smallest state in the United States; however, entering Providence gave me the feeling of entering a metropolis. We had spent the last few days riding on tree-lined rural routes in Maine and New Hampshire, but now we found ourselves negotiating multi-laned highways, toll roads, and clover leaf exits. We saw tall buildings. I saw some graffiti which I found off-putting, but fortunately, this was not a common occurrence in Providence.
Providence, Rhode Island
The Rhode Races website said that packet pickup would take place on the first floor of the Providence Place Mall. I had no idea that these straightforward instructions would lead to confusion. We parked on the third level of the parking garage that is attached to the mall. I assumed that I needed to take the escalator down to the first floor for packet pickup. We got to the first floor and saw nothing that resembled a running event. We backtracked and saw a sign pointing up to get to the stores. We took the escalator up from the third floor where we parked in the garage and, sure enough, we entered the mall on what was considered the first floor. That was weird.
Our hotel for this final leg of our road trip was Providence Marriott Downtown (Room #618). It is a sprawling brick building that looks like it has been around for quite some time. We had no issues with the hotel. We had a nice room. In fact, we had a good experience at all the hotels at which we stayed during this road trip.
For dinner, we ate our delicious Italian leftovers from Angelina's where we dined the previous night in Wells, Maine. We had packed the leftovers in ice and brought them with us to Providence. Our room at the Providence Marriott Downtown had a refrigerator but no microwave; therefore, we had to use the microwave in the very busy lobby. There were several events happening at the hotel in addition to all the runners being in town. This had the lobby buzzing with activity.
Traci and I are lifetime platinum members in the Marriott loyalty program. This gave us access to the concierge lounge where there were complimentary snacks and beverages. Despite this, Traci did not find anything there to satisfy her sweet tooth. We ended up driving to an Insomnia Cookies located near Brown University. This drive was the extent of our sightseeing in Providence. Parts of the city gave a colonial vibe with its narrow, hilly streets. I did not see any cobblestone, though.
We woke up at 5 AM the next morning. We navigated the city in our car so that I could drop Traci off at one of the shuttle pickups by 6:30 AM. Just like the day before, vehicles were not allowed to drive to the starting area of the race. I drove back to the hotel to have the complimentary breakfast in the concierge lounge. They had a nice spread there that even included a cook-to-order egg/omelet station. The staff was so accommodating when I told them that Traci was running the half marathon. They gave me containers so that I could bring breakfast back to our room for Traci.
I drove to the spectator parking lot and took a shuttle to the finish area of the half marathon. The course had a U-section that allowed me to take a picture of Traci at mile 10 and then again as she approached mile 13. Her time was fourteen minutes slower than the day before probably due to the combination of having run a half marathon yesterday and all the hills that she had to run today in Providence. It did not matter. The thing that mattered was that she finished state #32 - Rhode Island!
Mile 13 of the Providence Rhode Races Half Marathon
Back at the hotel, Traci got cleaned up and ate her breakfast while I took a nap. We had a late check-out of 4 PM due to our Marriott status. This came in handy because we did not need to be at the airport until 5:30 PM for our 7:30 PM flight home. On our way to the airport, we stopped at a restaurant called Ninety Nine. We used to enjoy this restaurant when we lived in Pennsylvania, but it closed and we hadn't seen another one until this New England road trip. We actually saw several of them during our trip.
We returned our rental car at the Providence airport (Rhode Island T.F. Green International Airport). We had driven 732 miles during this 5-day road trip. The airport was practically empty. There was no wait to check bags. There was no wait to go through security. The only wait that we encountered was the airplane. It had been delayed and did not arrive in Providence until an hour after we were supposed to take off. This was not a major concern for Traci and me since we were going home, but there were several passengers who had connections at Washington Dulles that they were now in danger of missing.
The flight from Providence to Washington Dulles was about an hour. Unlike our flight from Washington Dulles to Portland, Maine, the Wi-Fi was not working but at least we had beverage service. It had been a wonderful trip and, best of all, Traci moved two states closer to her goal of running a half marathon in all 50 states. Main Page...
Magnet Purchased on this Trip: (click to enlarge)
Entire fridge magnet collection...
Other Road Trips:
