Maine - Lay of the Land and The Landing School Visit

Our trip to Maine was centered around Brady's visit of The Landing School, a marine systems, boat building and yacht design school that Brady has been interested in attending since 2012-ish. He had the school send him a brochure ages ago as well to see what it was all about. So, a few months ago Brady reached out to the school once again to not only send him an updated brochure but to also schedule a tour/visit of the campus. Did I mention that this was Brady's first ever campus tour?!? Please pause for a brief PSA announcement... Kids, you are never too old to continue learning. 

We flew into Boston Thursday late morning and after going around in circles trying to figure out how to drive our rental car out of Boston, we headed up to the state of Maine via costal roads to take in the beautiful oceanside views. We stopped for lunch at Petey's in Rye, New Hampshire for our first bowl of 'chowda' and 'lobsta' rolls. They did not disappoint. That evening we met up with a friend of a friend whom we never met but was kind enough to to take us under his wing and tell us ALL the ins and outs of Portland and Maine. 

Kennebunk

The next morning we wanted to give ourselves enough time to get from Portland to the school. After grabbing an assortment of donuts and coffee at the Holy Donut on our way out of town, we ended up arriving at least 30 min early to the school. (Blame it on the sugar or caffeine rush or maybe it was just the excitement of endless possabilities in our future!) This gave us time to drive around the beautiful city of Kennebunk. It is the most quant New England town with colorful signposts pointing to where different things are throughout town, beautiful old New England style homes on huge acres of land and our visit happened to coordinate with "peak foliage" so the colors were bursting every direction you looked.

Wendy greeted us and gave us a wonderful tour of the state of the art facilities that the Landing School provides its students. We were able to learn about each of the four different programs that the school offered as well. They all sounded very awesome and interesting that I was getting just as excited as Brady was to apply! Brady was even able to chat with the Marine Systems instructor and in the brief time they spoke it seemed they saw eye to eye on everything. The school, instructors, courses, facility, staff, etc seemed to be a perfect fit; everything we were hoping the school would be! I even made him buy a school shirt before we left! 

At lunch our minds were swirling with what our lives would look like while he was back in school and we were living in Portland over some amazing razor clams and lobster rolls. We were SO excited and were already falling in love with this beautiful state and city. Then it was on to some sight seeing, we took the costal/scenic route back and hit up three lighthouses. That evening we hit up a foodie lovers festival. Portland is known for being a great restaurant town and it just so happened that we were there the weekend of a local festival so we had to partake and enjoy some great locally sourced cuisine. 

At Cape Elizabeth enjoying the best lobsta rolls ever!

Plethora o' Pots

Saturday and Sunday we did more of the same; hiking different trails, eating some amazing and affordable food, did a sake tasting, went to the 24/7 LL Bean store and met back up with our new friend and local tour guide, Adam. The more we explored the town the more we fell in love. Not only that but the handful of people who we met, complete strangers, all told us that they'd be willing to help us out if we needed help setting anything up during our move. We don't think that it was just lip service but that they actually meant it!  

We fell in love with the city after only a few short days. Some great friends of ours who frequented the Portland area said that even if we never visited Maine before our move they had no doubt that we would love it there. They were right! We are excited to experience the same city perks we love with a smaller, much smaller population. Only one thing is standing in our way... Brady's acceptance letter to The Landing School (in actuality he still has to finish completing the application first!)