Roadtrip Day 2: Boothbay Harbor, ME

We left Boston fairly early on Saturday morning (after we watched McGee's favorite soccer team (Tottenham)) and drove up to Maine.  One of McGee's friends had recommended a restaurant in Portland, ME, and it just so happened that we were passing through there around lunchtime!  The restaurant is called Duckfat, and WOW am I glad we stopped!!  Dining there was quite an experience.  I hiiiiiighly recommend it if you'll be anywhere near Portland, Maine!  They're known for their fries, which are fried in duck fat, and McGee's friend said we haaaad to get the Poutine, which is their famous fries that are covered in duck fat gravy and cheese curds.  It sounded gross, but we got a small order of it... and turns out it was amazing. Here's a picture of the Poutine and McGee's local beer (Bunker Brewing Company's M.C.I.P.A.) and my homemade rootbeer:

We also had some amazing sandwiches (McGee had a duck confit sandwich, and I had house-cured ham and cheese), and we split a cup of butternut squash soup (which was AMAZING... It had little bits of pancetta in it).  It was quite a lovely stop on our way to Boothbay Harbor!

As great as Portland looked, I'm so glad we went up to Boothbay Harbor for the night instead of staying in Portland like we'd originally wanted to do.  Boothbay Harbor was gorgeous, and such a relaxing and fun time.  I loved it, and we definitely want to go back.  Our bed and breakfast (Harbor House Inn) was beautiful, and the owners were so sweet and welcoming.  

After we checked in, we walked the whole way around the harbor, to the place that was recommended as having the best lobster rolls in Boothbay Harbor.  McGee agreed!  He loved it.  

Here's a few random pictures from our walk around the harbor that day:

This was a funny sign we saw in a pay parking lot in Boothbay Harbor.  They're very trusting in Maine!!  We were laughing at the idea of one of these signs in a pay parking lot in Philadelphia... 

For dinner, we went to the Boat House Bistro and we got to sit on their rooftop deck, which had gorgeous views of the harbor.  It was already dark out though, so I knew my camera couldn't capture the beauty of the lights and night view of the harbor!  It was so relaxing and beautiful, and the perfect way to end the night.  The food was awesome, and McGee liked their local beer selection, and I had some Boothbay Harbor Rum Punch!!  It was delicious.  After dinner, we baaaarely had time to stop by the Downeast Ice Cream Factory before it closed, but I'm so glad we made it!  It's this little ice cream shop owned by a cute old couple, and it serves all homemade ice cream.  AMAZING ice cream.

Here's a picture of a house that's for sale right across the street from the bed and breakfast we stayed at.  Housing prices are SO reasonable in Boothbay... I think we might just buy this cute little house and move there.  If it had a yard for Guinness, I think we would've put in an offer on the spot! 

 Here's another beautiful tree I saw!  I loooove the changing leaves!  

It was quite an amazing day and night.  In the morning, the bed and breakfast made us some belgian waffles (with Maine blueberries on top!) and maybe the best blueberry muffins we've ever had (Maine blueberries!), and I had some of their fruit salad too (more blueberries!).  We walked around Boothbay Harbor a bit more and did a little more shopping before getting in the car to drive to New Hampshire!

Roadtrip Day 1: Mystic, CT and Boston, MA

The first day of our roadtrip began with a stop by the dog boarding place to drop off Guinness, and then we were off to Mystic, CT!  The drive went SO well (I was super worried we were going to hit a ton of traffic since it was a Friday morning... but McGee thought it would go smoothly and he was very right!).  We made it in an easy 4 hours, and immediately stopped by Mystic Pizza for lunch because we were super hungry.  It was a cute place right in the middle of town, and the pizza was good (but quite greasy!).  They had tons of paraphernalia from the Mystic Pizza movie, and they have TV screens all over the restaurant with the movie on loop.  McGee had never seen the movie, so he wasn't quite as stoked as I was about the place, but he still enjoyed the pizza and the local beer (Mystic Bridge IPA).  

After we finished a nice lunch, we were walking back to the car and I saw this awesome whale:

Next up in Mystic, CT was the B.F. Clyde's Cider Mill!!  I was so excited.  It was a cute little mill, and they had lots of local honeys and maple syrups and jams.  They also had a whole wall of their hard ciders and apple wines, so we picked up a few hard ciders because I loooooove hard cider!  We also each got a cup of their fresh apple cider and enjoyed that outside.  We had SUCH beautiful weather all weekend!  We were very lucky.  

Notice that there's no "G" on "Wine Tastin"?  I thought that was cute.

And here's one of the beautiful trees I saw in Mystic!  There were definitely still lots of green trees all throughout New England, but most of them were beginning to change to lovely Fall colors.  I guess peak season for the leaves this year won't be for a few more weeks. 

We did a little bit of shopping around town, and we also stopped by the Mystic Beanery for some amaaaaazing coffee before our drive up to Boston.  We stayed with a few of McGee's friends in Boston for the night, and they took us to a really fantastic Mexican restaurant for dinner that was near Harvard campus (the campus was gorgeous!), and then we went back to their place to hang out with their dogs and drink some of the B.F. Clyde's hard cider while playing Apples to Apples.  

So, let me tell you about the hard cider:  That stuff was POWERFUL.  We were all expecting a typical delicious hard cider, but little did we know that the cider was strooooong!!!  It was over 14% ABV.  I hadn't even checked the label to see how strong it was, because I was assuming the usual 5% or so.  It was hard to even enjoy it... McGee's friend liked it though, so we left the 2nd bottle with her.  I kept a bottle of the hard cider that we got that's apples mixed with cranberries, so I'll try that one some other time when I'm feeling brave. 

That was it for Day 1!!  Next up was Boothbay Harbor, Maine.  

Fall is upon us

It's definitely feeling like Fall!  I took a few pictures of some pretty trees in the parking lot of our apartment complex.

I'm hoping that if the trees look this pretty here, they'll be gorgeous once he head up to New England tomorrow!  I am SO excited for our roadtrip.  I think the things I'm looking forward to the most are the cider place in Connecticut, the brewery Inn in New Hampshire, and just seeing Maine!  And it's been a long time since McGee and I have had the chance to get away with just the two of us, so I'm quite excited to have some relaxing and fun times together.

We'll be boarding Guinness for the first time while we're on our roadtrip, so my fingers are crossed that it goes well so we can continue to board him at this place (like when we go to Hawaii).  Guinness has been SUCH a handful recently... It's been quite exhausting and frustrating, and I feel like a failure a lot of times.  An example of this was this morning.  He decided to shred and eat a good portion of this foam mat that he sits and lays on in the kitchen (we've had it forever...), so now I'm on the lookout to make sure he's ok from that.  OF COURSE he would do this the day before we're leaving on our trip... The good news is that he didn't eat a ton of it, and it's very thin foam (I'd say maybe 1/4" thick?), so it should be ok... I called the vet to be safe, and they said that they really think it should pass just fine, but they told me some warning signs to look for.  

Last weekend I also had a scary few days with Guinness, because I gave him this edible bone thing that I saw at Petsmart, and he devoured it.  It said on the package that it was long-lasting for strong chewers, but that it was highly-digestible and nutritious.  Sounds great, right?  WELL, when I gave it to him I watched him for a minute or two and he was only getting tiny crumbs off (and this "bone" was about 8.5" or so long... It was the correct size for his weight), so then I went in the other room to quickly plug in my phone and check my email.  I promise you I was in the other room for 5 minutes at the very tops, and I really think it was more like 3 minutes.  When I went back to Guinness, the bone was GONE.  It was completely gone.  And he was just sitting there looking energetic, wagging his tail.  I started searching around in a panic, because I was hoping maybe he'd hidden it somewhere???  But nope, he ate the whole huge thing in like 3 to 5 minutes.  So then I was searching online for what to do, and everything I could find (it turns out other people had experienced the same thing with this bone... Ugh... I should've checked reviews before buying it) said that he should be fine, but to keep an eye on him because the bone could cause a blockage in his stomach or intestines if he didn't properly chew it.  He turned out to be fine after a few stressful days for me.  Luckily (????) he's a strong chewer, so I'm betting he chewed that bone up quite thoroughly.  Ugh.  

In Fall Bucket List news, my friend Colleen came over last weekend for brunch, and I made some breakfast potatoes and some pumpkin cream cheese muffins (totally from scratch!).  They have a streusel topping, which was soooo good.  It was a good intro to the pumpkin awesomeness of Fall, but I think I'll definitely need more pumpkin.

That's it for now!  I'll post lots of pictures from our roadtrip.  

Leaf Peepers

I'm getting so excited for our roadtrip at the end of this month to Maine!  We're starting to plan it a bit more, so I thought I'd give you the quick run-down of what we're going to do.  We don't have everything figured out yet, because we want it to be a pretty kick-back roadtrip with no real plans but just some ideas of what to do... But we learned the hard way that going to see the Fall foliage in New England is quite a common practice around here, and the hotels and bed and breakfast inns really fill-up early for some of the more popular areas!  A LOT of places were already completely booked when we started trying to browse our options for accommodations.  Oh, and if you're wondering about the title of this post, the common term around here for going up to New England to see the pretty Fall foliage is "Leaf Peeping", so Kevin and I are going to be Leaf Peepers that weekend. We're going to hit 3 states on our roadtrip, and they're all states I haven't "done" yet, so I'm going to be able to cross them off my list of states I need to visit (and yes, I literally have a list...).  

First on our trip is Connecticut, and we thought a good city to stop and visit would be Mystic, CT.  We know we're definitely going to eat at Mystic Pizza (THE Mystic Pizza from the horrible/awesome 80s movie!).  And then there's also a cider mill that I thought sounded pretty cool that we might try to see.  It's called B.F. Clyde's Cider Mill.. Doesn't even just the name sound fun?!?!  B.F. Clyde's is the oldest steam-powered cider mill in the United States (established in 1881).

Next on our roadtrip is Maine, and we were going to stay in Portland, but it turns out that was a VERY popular idea and we really couldn't find anywhere to stay.  So, we decided to head a bit further north to a cool area called Boothbay Harbor, and we found a lovely bed and breakfast inn to stay at there. The top image is the inn, and the 2nd image is what Boothbay Harbor looks like!  It's only about a 2 minute walk from the inn.

And our final stop on the trip will be New Hampshire, and we've decided to stay in Portsmouth, NH.  And we're super excited about the inn we found there!  It's in the building that used to be the Portsmouth Brewery (in the 1800's), and it was converted into an inn.  The top image is the Ale House Inn, and the next image is what Portsmouth looks like from a distance.  

That's our roadtrip so far!  I'll take lots of pictures, don't you worry!  

Chargers!!!

I went to my first Chargers game!  Sure, it was in Philadelphia, but it still counts!  And, I'm not sure how many of you saw the game or the final score, but my dear Chargers WON!!!! It was quite an exciting game.  I ended up wearing my Chargers t-shirt loud and proud when we were tailgating, and when we walked into the stadium, and for a good portion of the first half.  But we were in the shade, so by the end of the 2nd quarter I was getting pretty chilly and I put my blue jacket on (but partially unzipped so I was still sporting my Chargers shirt!).  But at the end of the game when the Chargers won (it was an exciting finish!), I zipped up my jacket all of the way so that I wouldn't test the patience of the Eagles fans after a loss while we walked to the parking lot.

For the first half, we were standing by this OBNOXIOUS woman who was being very loud and vulgar about her disapproval of the Chargers, so at the half we moved to the opposite side of the stadium and found a great place to stand with an amazing view of the field, and we were by these really awesome and nice Eagles fans.  At one point, DeSean Jackson caught a really impressive pass for a touchdown (that ended up not counting...), and the guy next to me high-fived Kevin and then turned to me for a high-five (he hadn't noticed my shirt...), and so I kinda looked at him and smiled and shrugged while I high-fived him, but then I pointed to my shirt and said, "I'm a Chargers fan" so then he thought that was hilaaaarious and he was so much fun the rest of the game.  There was some friendly teasing throughout the game, but he was quite funny and always nice.  It was totally a great experience (except for that woman during the first half, and when poor Malcom Floyd got hurt).

I gotta tell you though, I don't often feel ballsy, but I felt pretty ballsy when I was standing in line to go into the stadium.  I was in a sea of Eagles fans wearing green and Eagles gear, and there I was wearing my light blue Chargers shirt.  It definitely stood out.  It was way too warm to wear my jacket at that point though, so the weather was deciding my ballsy-ness for me.  And Kevin was standing right next to me (in his Eagles jersey), holding my hand the entire time.

Here's our view for the 2nd half of the game!  It was pretty amazing.  

In other news, we got Guinness a dog bed for the living room.  In this first picture, he doing a very good impression of a well-behaved dog, but the 2nd and 3rd picture is the real Guinness.  Isn't he starting to look SO much like a German Shepherd?  We aren't TECHNICALLY allowed to have a German Shepherd (or a dog that's even partially German Shepherd...) in our apartment complex, so it's starting to get pretty bad... People ask all the time, "Is he a German Shepherd??!??!"  And we're like, "What? Him?  Noooooo.... But that's SO funny you think that!" And then we say he's a mutt. Yeah..... it's getting more and more difficult.  He didn't look anything like a German Shepherd when he was a little puppy... but now it's pretty hard to try to pass him off as anything BUT a German Shepherd.  

It's almost Fall!

Oh how I love Fall.  It is definitely one of the things I love about living on the East Coast.  The leaves change to the most beautiful colors.  I think pretty much everyone that knows me knows that I'm pretty in love with trees anyways, but once you add in the colors of Fall I just can't get enough of them.  And I love when the weather cools off and the humidity goes away (I do NOT love the humid summers here...), and you get to enjoy crisp mornings and evenings, and start wearing sweaters and hoodies and scarves!  It's a glorious time of year.  It also doesn't hurt that I love all things pumpkin and apple, so it's a season full of awesome smells and tastes!

It also REALLY doesn't hurt that Fall is when football season starts... Haha :)  The Eagles-Chargers game is next weekend!  I can't believe it's here so soon.  I still haven't decided how brave/stupid/bold I'm going to be with my Chargers gear... But so far I'm leaning towards wearing a Chargers shirt underneath my jacket (which is also blue!), so then I won't be an in-your-face Chargers fan, but I'll definitely be supporting my Chargers (yet not pissing off the sometimes hostile and scary Eagles fans).

I've made a Fall Bucket List!  And I'm currently on the road for work, sitting in a hotel in Rockville, MD... so that's why I had the time to make it look all pretty.  I'll take pictures and post updates of anything that's at all interesting from my list!  A few of the bigger plans are already in the works, including the Yuengling Oktoberfest (we went last year, and it was sooooo fun), and we're slowly starting to plan a roadtrip up to Maine for the end of this month.  We're going to travel through Connecticut and New Hampshire too (and stop to do fun stuff, of course), so that I can cross those 3 states off my list of states I need to visit!  We just still have to figure out our plan and what cool stuff we're going to see in those 3 states.

7 months old!

Our dear boy is just over 7 months old now.  Where does the time go?!  It seems like just yesterday that we got him.  However, it feels like at least 7 YEARS since we moved into this apartment... so... I don't know how that math works... especially since we got Guinness about 3 weeks after we moved in.

I have no idea how much Guinness weighs now, but I do know that he is getting HUGE.  He feels like he's definitely over 50 pounds to me... but I don't know.  His coloring is still changing a lot, and he's getting lighter and lighter everywhere.  His stomach is almost entirely white now, and it's looking like most of his black fur will eventually turn brown.

Guinness loooooooooves to chew on stuff, so we we make sure he's well-stocked with toys, etc for him to chew on (so that he doesn't decide to start chewing on furniture, shoes, etc!).  He's also an incredibly powerful chewer, so we have to be careful about what we get for him to chew on now.  He can thoroughly destroy most stuffed toys within about 20 minutes, and even some of the chew toys that are labeled as "tough" chew toys get destroyed within an hour.  So, now we mainly get ropes for him to chew on (he loves them), and most Kong toys work quite well too (including some of their fabric toys), and he still looooves to chew on towels.  I also got him this ring chew toy that I was quite excited about because it's fabric but it was tested on TIGERS!!!  It's supposed to be incredibly tough, and it's been a few weeks now and it's still in great shape and he loves it (though I think I should have purchased the size smaller... It's a little too big for him to carry around easily!).

He likes to stomp on the ring toy because it has squeakers inside!

Here he is chewing on the ring!  It's a little on the big side... 

This is a fabric Kong toy!  It's a moose, but he already chewed off the antlers... These Kong toys are cool though, because they have ropes inside instead of stuffing.  

Not much else is going on... This past weekend was busy, and on Saturday we went to a Philadelphia Union soccer match, and did lots of tailgating all day with Kevin's friends, and in the evening we all went to some bars.  On Sunday I met up with my friend Brandan from college!!  He'd posted on Facebook that he was in Philly for work, so I sent him a text message saying that I lived here and we should meet up!!  He was here for work (he's a photographer and writer for Hot Rod magazine), so on Sunday I drove to the racetrack he was working at (somewhere in the middle of nowhere in New Jersey) and watched some drifting and hung out with Brandan!  And then on Monday Kevin and I went into Philly to meet up for lunch at one of our favorite bars with Brandan and his co-workers before they had to head to the airport.  It was a very busy but fun weekend!!