My wife and I wanted to get away, so we decided waaayy back in February that a trip to Maine would be a kickass idea.  She’d been there several years ago and I’d never been to the east coast, never seen the ocean(s, either one but you’ve gotta start somewhere), and never gone camping.

I fixed this last week.

I’ve been trying to write about the trip for the past week, but it refuses to be transcribed.  The memories left claw marks on the inside of my skull from clinging to the bone while I yanked on their feet.  Then I gave up.  I can’t pen a breath-taking view, or the feeling of standing in the ocean for the first time, or my wife and I shouting at each other to keep moving so that the cloud of mosquitoes behind us can’t catch up while we went exploring.

But I do have a few pieces of advice that I gleaned from my road trip and several days camping in Maine.

1. Don’t piss anyone off in eastern Maine.  Your body will never be found, because it will be buried beneath the seven metric tons of crab bits washed up from the ocean every half-hour.

2. Don’t drive length-wise through upstate New York.  It’s pretty like a desert – great to look at for the first hour but there’s too damn much of it and after a while you start to hallucinate.  Especially at night.  Especially as you plunge up and down the hills and watch the city lights blend with the stars until you’re not sure where the ground ends and the sky begins.  Especially when you’re half-mad from twelve hours of driving.

3. Out-of-control-truck ramps are both thrilling and terrifying.  The mountains that require them even moreso.

4. The sand on the beaches was mostly mica.  It created a beautiful, shimmering beach, but if you dug about an inch down in the sand you got a nostrilful of rotting ocean stench.

5. If you grew up with computers, and then spend a solid week without using them, you have a hard time typing when you come back.  It’s a good feeling.

6. Seagulls and island critters love to pull crab takeaway out of the garbage and scatter it all over the path.

7. Campers love to buy crab takeaway.

8. New Hampshire has a “state liquor store” that’s open on Sundays.

Pictures are forthcoming.