After a couple of days travelling and an overnight stop in Honolulu, we are finally in Maine, USA. I liken international air travel to having a baby - somehow we forget all about the pain it causes and we front up for seconds!!! We are now very well acquainted with Terminal 5 of JFK New York after having spent 10 hours waiting for our flight to Portland, Maine. The original one was cancelled due to a maintenance issue (good news really) so we had to wait for the next one.

We didn't get into Portland until just on dark, so chose to eat at the nearby Maine Mall at Hometown Buffet, a bit like Sizzler. The upside of this place was that everything is freshly cooked on site but the downside was trying to find something that wasn't laced with sugar or fat to please the local taste buds. Eventually we found some fresh salad stuff, including beetroot to Brad's joy, followed by a simple beef & veg stir fry cooked right in front of us. What I found most interesting though and somewhat nauseating, was watching the overly large locals stuffing (in the literal sense) their faces with as much food as they could in whatever order before their stomachs told them they were full! Not a pretty sight!

We picked up our car, a almost new Ford Fusion, and gingerly began our journey north on the turnpike (new word for us meaning freeway). Beautiful autumn colours greeted us as we drove especially after we turned onto minor roads to complete the journey to Bar Harbor. On the way we stopped at a Lonely Planet must-see town of Wiscasset where we had to stop and buy some lobster at the famous Red's Eats. Here the queue in summer is so long that the local council is considering building a bypass so that the through traffic doesn't have to go through the town where all the people are queuing and spilling onto the roadway. It was definitely worth the 45 minutes we waited for a hot bread roll stuffed with a whole lobster, the cost being $16 each. Whole fresh lobsters here can be bought for $4 per pound so I'm sure we will be eating lobster again!! Next stop was the pretty port town of Camden, a real touristy place a bit like Bowral but on the coast.

Bar Harbor (that's how it's spelt) is situated on Mt Desert Island the home of Acadia National Park and is linked to the mainland by a bridge. This place must be thumping in the summer but at the moment is just pleasantly busy. We are staying in the Aurora Inn which is within walking distance to Main St. After searching on Trip advisor for somewhere good to eat, we settled on the very popular Rosalie's Pizza which turned out to be a 60s style joint but with very 2012 type food. Our medium sized pizza which we shared, turned out to be huge by our standards and was even superceded by large and extra-large!! I knew the meals here are big, but they are even bigger than I ever imagined!!

Today we hope to do some walking in the national park but at the moment it is very misty, and cold of course - 11 degrees!