The Best Part of Summer

The best part of summertime is enjoying the evenings when it isn't so hot, and you can relax, eat outside, drink root beer, and let the kids run wild. And it is even better when you get to enjoy it with your family. Alisha and Cory we are so glad that you made the trek to come and visit.

My Boys

Untitled from Mike Frost on Vimeo.

Yep, we will be adding another boy to our family, around November 25, and we are so excited.

Lobster by the Pound

You don't think we drove all the way to Maine, and didn't eat a lobster.

And by the way, Maine lobster is as good as they say it is.

The Amazing Race

4 days

1659.2 miles

34 hours in the car

10 states (Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Pennsylvania)

$76 in tolls

2 kids

1 Jetta

We win.

On Tuesday, as is typical for me, I finally realized that a holiday weekend was coming up, and that I had a day off. I called Kim, and we scrambled to come up with vacation plans. I wanted to head up to Quebec, but Kim shot this idea down because it was "too far." Kim wanted to got to Maine (which, incidentally, is 12 minutes further away than Quebec City), but I wanted to avoid the I-95 corridor during the holiday weekend.

We had come to a stalemate, and had decided not to go anywhere at all, when mid-morning on Thursday we got an email from our friends, Bennett and Becka, inviting us to join them at their cabin in Maine. Advantage, Kim.

At noon on Thursday we decided to go, and by 4 pm we were in the car and on our way. Despite leaving a bit early, and the day before the weekend, we hit a healthy amount of traffic on our way out. Before stopping at Chik-fil-a (they have a new spicy chicken sandwich!) for dinner three hours in, we had made it a total of 60 miles. Do the math on that.

We drove until midnight, got a room in Connecticut and crashed. We woke up to Henry and Megan rough housing and wrestling on their shared queen-size bed, and we got back on the road, thinking the worst was behind us. It turned out that we had another eight hours to go, mainly because we ran into a number of construction projects.

After all this, it was with delirious happiness that we pulled up to Messalonskee Lake near Waterville, Maine, and were greeted by this peaceful scene and the warm hospitality of the Obergs.




I stretched out, soaked up the sun, and felt instantly that it had all been worth it. We ran to the car, unloaded our things and went swimming.

No phones were lost in the making of this post

The Obergs had planned out a great meal and sparklers for us, our kids ran around like lunatics, and we even worked in some fishing. Kim and I decided that we need to re-evaluate our priorities in life, and move somewhere like this.










The next day, we got up and headed out on the open road again. We stopped to get a GPS unit from the local Wal-Mart (the maps we had printed off for this voyage took 7-8 pages, and had at least one major error that cost us 40 minutes in New Jersey), and drove a few hours more to Acadia National Park. From what we had heard, Acadia (which is located on Mount Desert Island) offered in one spot the rugged granite shoreline, lighthouses, working lobster ports and pine forests that Maine is famous for. It did not disappoint.

We spent the night at a hotel near the seawall, and got up the next morning to explore the tide pools at low tide, and hike around a bit.












During our last hike, Megan fell into the mud. She was not pleased. Searching for the harshest thing she could think of to say about it, she said, "This place is a dammit for me."


At lunch we stopped for one more meal at a local diner, and then turned our sites toward home. We thought we'd split up the drive again, but by the time the kids fell asleep in the evening we decided to just keep on going, ending up back in Virginia at 2 in the morning, but with an extra day to rest. On the drive, we saw fireworks from towns all through Pennsylvania, and pulled over on the side of a hill to take it in and enjoy the summer night. It was a fantastic trip.

Happy Birthday, America!