Last Saturday Jack had two ballgames in Springfield in the morning. So the wife, Elsa, Laina and myself took Jack over there at 7 in the morning. He played two great games, which his team won both. Everyone played great actually. It’s those types of games in which you see that you’re over-matched, like it’s not competitive. These were good confidence building games after the string of losses they’ve been putting up though.

I took everyone home and Jack and myself came back to Chatham for the night game. They won that, so they had to play again Sunday morning. Wife, Jack and myself took the Corolla over so that I could leave the Tesla charged for our trip to the airport. If we would have took the Tesla I would have had to go through Springfield yet again to supercharge.

Jack’s team lost the championship game but got medals for coming in second, which was pretty cool.

We came back home and got the house ready for mom to stay at for the next five days. We packed up the car and started off on our trip to Romeoville, to stay in a hotel overnight so we could more easily catch our morning flight out of Midway. The car said we could miss the Normal supercharger and head all the way to Dwight with 10% battery. I’d had forgotten how great Teslas do in warm weather. The batteries are warmer so they can go farther, which is just like a gas car too but you don’t really notice that with a gas car. There’s no range anxiety there because there are multiple gas stations everywhere; you don’t pay attention to the gas gauge/range as much as you do in an electric car.

10% is too close for comfort to me so we stopped in Normal anyway to charge up. Meijers is always a nice place to go into anyway while charging. Jack got some bluetooth headphones for the trip.

Then it was a relatively short trip to Dwight, where we charged for about 10 minutes and got some stuff from Casey’s. We really didn’t have to charge here, but, you know, range anxiety.

Then it was another relatively short drive to our hotel in Romeoville. Getting out of the car, heading to the hotel entrance, I was struck by the feeling of how much I love to travel. Just the idea of getting away and having some new experiences is awesome. As an introverted type of person, traveling and having my senses triggered by new things is part of what drives me. I used to be ok traveling alone, like for work, but now I have to have my family with me in order to get the full happiness out of it. Laina didn’t make it on this trip with us but she will go next month to Miami when we all go. But I truly love having new, shared experiences with my family.

Before we settled in for the night we went to supercharge all the way up to 90% so that I would assured that the car would have enough energy while parked at the airport garage.

We had a decent night in the hotel. You never know how many alarms your kids have set on their phones until you wake up in the middle of the night to turn them off. Jack had the first alarm for 5:45AM. Seriously?! This kid hasn’t been up that early since he was born.

We woke up, had a good breakfast, then made the short jaunt to Midway. I wished we were flying out of O’hare but Southwest doesn’t fly out of there. I love airports. I love O’hare. I love the idea that you can walk around for an hour in an airport and still not cover the same ground. I really want to show the kids the walkways that go under the runway. It’s all just very Chicago-y. Jack asked me why anyone would want to go to Chicago. I told him that we all went when he and Elsa were very young. There is so much to see and do here. It’s a world class city that we are lucky to be within driving distance of. I mean, St. Louis will always be “my” city, the one I love. But Chicago is amazing for tourism and shopping.

I parked the car with 87% battery, shut off Sentry and Cabin-overheating, and shut off my phone app – all things that will drain a battery if left on.

We got through security with something like 54 hours to spare lol, which is how I like it. I haaaaaaate being rushed in airports. It’s a helpless feeling.

We did the Southwest stand-in-line thingy, got in the metal tube, flew through the air, looked down at nothing but overcast skies the whole way, then landed in Portland Maine. Instead of getting a Turo I got a rental car due to an amazing discount from work. I picked out a Nissan Armada, which was damned near like a tank of a vehicle compared to our Model Y. It seats eight, comfortable. There was a pang of initial guilt, like maybe we should have had a gas car, this size, for our other road trips.

We drove about 20 miles south down to our AirBNB in Saco ME. This is what makes our trips affordable (and numerous): Southwest flights (cheap, free baggage), Turo (usually cheaper than rentals), and AirBNB (cook your own meals to save $$$, do your own laundry so that you don’t have to bring so many clothes). It was a cute little cottage, part of a duplex. There was one bathroom, which wasn’t too bad but wow, we’re spoiled with our three bathrooms at home. Our master bed was rock-hard. I thought this would be a major issue but I think it helped the wife and I get up earlier in the mornings, like around 6AM. The light beaming into the bedroom helped in that regard as well.

Emma slept on the couch, like always. Jack crafted an awesome bed out of the two chairs and cushions. Elsa slept in the other bedroom. It was quant, to say the least.

That Monday night we found a local seafood place and paid market price ($62) for lobster. Mine tasted okay but wow, it was too chewy for me. I was having flashbacks to when I had awful acid reflux, before I knew what it was. I spent a month not being able to eat solid foods for fear of choking.

Tuesday morning my awesome wife made awesome pancakes and we drove into South Portland to the bike shop to start our 3-hour bicycle tour of lighthouses. Our guide Ross was a great dude, used to work for NPR. Karen from Berkeley CA was with us too. She did architectural design for cities, to make them more walkable, which sounds like the most Berkeley kind of job imaginable lol.

We saw a couple of cool lighthouses, rode on some nice bike paths and then visited the Portland Head lighthouse which was the most picturesque of them all. We had lobster rolls and pulled pork for lunch and then headed back to the shop.

The tour was described as “leisurely”. I would describe it as “calf-building”. But all in all it was a very good experience, a very good value.

Wednesday we made the three hour trek up north to Acadia National Park. I’d picked out a “leisurely” 3.2 mile hike, a loop around Jordan Pond. It was a rather uneventful drive up there. There was really nothing but interstate and trees for 3 hours.

We got to the island and had to drive around for 30 minutes, waiting for a parking spot to open up. I guess everyone else had the same idea we had. I’d heard that the national parks were packed every since COVID started, since it was really the only place that vacationers could go.

The first hour of the hike was great. It was a beautiful, clear pond surround by beautiful wilderness. Lots of pictures were taken. The second hour was slightly more grueling, which some rocks to climb and wooden planks to walk. But again, definitely worth the trip and worthy of another visit. I can foresee our family hitting up more national parks on future trips.

On the way back we stopped in Bangor (BANG-OAR, not BANGER) to see Stephen King’s house. There was a guy there taking pictures outside on the sidewalk when we got there. More people stopped after we arrived. It’s pretty cool that he still lives in Bangor, in the same house, in the same residential neighborhood.

On the way home I was really missing our Model Y. This Nissan had the worst user-interface for the display. Somehow it had gotten set to avoid interstates, so we were driving on a backroad for 30 minutes before I figured it out. Add to the fact that you could not change your route while in drive; that would drive me insane if we had to park the Y every I wanted to change routes.

Thursday was game day, to see the Portland Sea Dogs. The stadium was still fairly small for a AA minor league team. But it held about a thousand middle school kids who were there for Education Day. The it started raining like crazy. So it was a clusterfark, for sure, trying to get concessions or to get into the gift shop. Not a good experience for the family but good for Jack and myself because we love baseball, even in the pouring rain.

We left after the fourth inning and went to the Victoria Mansion. It was another one of those mansions that had a bunch of rooms/floors that were off limits to visitors, which is a downer. Like, c’mon man, let us see the whole house! The Pabst Mansion in Milwaukee was the coolest tour we’ve been on. It was a huge house and you could go anywhere in it. I still love the Dana-Thomas house in Springfield most of all though. I’ve been there three or four times and I would go back in a heartbeat. I’m trying to put together a trip to Pittsburgh to see a Pirates game and to go to Fallingwater, sort of Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece. I love architecture though, especially midcentury modern and Art Deco. I can’t wait to see the Art Deco hotels in Miami.

After that we decided to drive to New Hampshire so that we could scratch that state off the map. I would have liked to drive to Vermont too but it was three hours away. We did end up going to Massachusetts for Dunkin Donuts, turning around, and going home. So now we have Vermont to visit, which is going to be hard to do unless we go to Boston or Quebec City sometime and make a concerted effort to go to Vermont.

Friday we went out to the beach, and then decided to drive to Ferry Beach, which was beautiful. It was overcast and 55 degrees the whole trip, so it wasn’t like we were going to swim. But the kids found huge sea shells. We wished we would have went to this beach before and walked it down to the pier.

We packed up the house, headed to Portland and stopped at the Maine Mall to kill some time. The mall is the second largest mall in New England but it was underwhelming. I was hoping it would be like Tyson’s Corner or something of that size. I love going to malls. I’d spent my childhood hearing about the Springfield Mall from my friends that had been there but my family had no reason to go. Especially since Dad worked in Springfield everyday, the last thing he wanted to do on his free weekends was to drive to Springfield. But when my brother turned 16 he got contacts and we had to go to Springfield to get them. I can still literally envision that day clearly, going to the mall; McDonalds! Two toy stores! And going to Toy’s R Us. It was one of the happiest days of my life. Years of anticipation had paid off in spades. So I still like going to new malls to recapture a tiny fragment of that excitement. But as an adult and amateur economist I love to visit malls to gauge how the economy is doing, how many stores are open and closed, what types of stores, how busy they are, etc.

We got to the airport and easily made it through security. My kids are pros at flying. They know the whole spiel of what to take out and place in bins for X-rays. They’ll never have the pent-up anticipation of finally flying like I experienced at age 30, but that’s how it goes. This reminds me, I’ll have to add Portland ME to my airport map.

We flew to Midway, got in the car and it was at 77% percent. So it used about 2% batter per day, which is fine. I’ll take it.

We drove home and only charged at Normal this time. We got home and greeted our loving livestock and rested. Another successful vacation was in the books. I’m thankful for my family that travels extraordinarily well, and thankful for our excellent jobs with excellent pay that allows us to take these excellent trips. The wife and mine education, hard work and thriftiness pays off in later life for us.