Last Saturday dawned bright, sunny and warm. Thirteen individuals, one young man and his Mom, and four chaperones gathered at the ARC Community Services parking lot to head to Maine. After greeting old friends and meeting new traveling companions, everyone piled into the vans in high spirits to spend a fun weekend together.
After a ride filled with conversation and songs, we arrived at Scarborough Downs Racetrack. For many folks, this was their first experience with harness racing. Jenn L. intently watched the TV monitor, the race board and studied her program, trying to select the potentially winning horse. She nearly jumped off her seat when the horse she picked won the third race! We all enjoyed a lavish buffet lunch and spent a couple of hours watching and betting on the horses.
We took a short ride to our hotel in Old Orchard beach right on the water then headed over to the area near Old Orchard’s famous pier. We enjoyed the sun, the ocean’s breeze and playing games at the arcade before heading to the Clambake Restaurant for dinner. I’m not sure which people enjoyed more – eating their dinner or feeding their leftovers to the waiting seagulls! We ended our busy day at the hotel with time for swimming in the indoor pool or just relaxing in our rooms.
Early Sunday morning brought most of us out onto the beach for a walk and to look for shells before we checked out and headed for breakfast. The icon fisherman at the restaurant was a source of delight for our travelers. We enjoyed a coastal ride to Ogunquit and Perkins Cove. We strolled through this lovely area then boarded our boat for a highlight of our trip, a lobster cruise! Captain Tom, our guide Amy and her 2 daughters narrated this cruise, told and showed us how lobsters are caught, shared lobster info, and brought lobsters, sea urchins, crabs and other sea creatures around to be seen and touched up close and personal.
After a final stop for lunch and ice cream, we headed home tired and happy from our wonderful weekend. As Jill B. said, “I love our trips; we always do fun stuff and best of all, I get to hang out and have fun with my friends.”