Almost With Tears in Our Eyes, Departure Day Has Arrived

Thought we were only changing sites one more time as I mentioned previously, we actually moved twice, an awesome site on the small lake opened up so we moved over.  Fall is definitely in the air here, trees are starting to change, and the mums are everywhere.

 

We had a cool, very windy, rainy day so we decided to go back to JoJo's again, the Thai restaurant and had delicious scallion pancakes as part of our lunch.  We had never had them before, very tasty!

Pancakes

Chicken satay

It rained all day, but cleared just in time for cocktail hour!  Turned into a beautiful evening although a bit chilly.

We also, on our rainy day, decided to tackle making beef pho for the first time, we had made chicken before and it is very similar, but takes a lot more time to make the broth, the most important part of the dish.  We do think, if we say so ourselves, it turned out awesome!

As our time was running out, we asked each other if there was any other place or restaurant we wanted to go to before leaving.  We picked going back to Trevett Country Store in Boothbay for lunch, even though it was a pretty long way, we wanted to explore another area of Maine near Whitefield anyway so we tied them together.  Our lunch was excellent, haddock and whole belly clams!  And Whitefield was interesting, an area of farmland, rolling hills of woods and fields and pastures filled with many Amish families.

The weather must have known we were leaving as it could not have been nicer, blue skies, temps in the low 70's, and venturing into the 40's at night, in fact last night was 37!  Wonderful for walking and getting a few chores done.

One of our pristine evenings

Jan got her haircut and then we launched for our last visit to Billy's Chowder House for Wednesday oysters, and awesome lobster stew.  Just a picture of the stew, figured you'd seen enough oysters by now:-)

By the way, it doesn't get any better than this

The weather just kept giving, just beautiful!

Across the tidal marsh near Billy's

And the view from our new site

Which brought us to our last day, and we filled it.  Jan had ordered a bunch of fish that we could freeze and take with us, so after grocery shopping she picked up our 10 lbs of cod, 3 lbs of swordfish, 3 lbs of scallops, and a halibut filet for dinner:-)  Then she had to get it in all in vacuum packs for the freezer.

10 lbs of beautiful loin cut cod

Ready for the freezer

One of the restaurants we found several years ago and enjoyed, Empire Chinese Kitchen, has continued to only offer takeout on only a few days because of Covid, I think it is past time to give it a rest, but that's only my opinion.  So we had decided not to bother this year, but we relented at the last minute on yet another gorgeous day and ordered, and we have to admit we were very glad we did.  It is just as good as we remember and eating with a view of Portland's harbor added icing on the cake, or should I say Bao bun:-)

First, our view.

Har Gow, shrimp dumpling on the top
Honey Walnut Shrimp below

The AWESOME Bao Buns,
Peking Duck on top,
Spicy Pork Belly below

It was a taste sensation.  Then later we picked up our 7 small cooked lobsters for our dinner finale and 2 upcoming lobster roll lunches while on the road:-)  Which wound up our last day, only to be topped by this sunset on our last evening!!

So off to western Mass now and then farther south.  Goodbye Maine, for now.