Because we had been making our plans for our trip as we went, we still had an open day on Tuesday to have some fun. First, we thought of going to another show, and went to get tickets to see the recent production of "Little Shop of Horrors," but the site kept doing funny things when we went to finish our purchase. It turned out that it was because they had just canceled all their shows for the next week, since too many of their cast had Covid. Plan B was to get tickets to see "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child," and so we bought tickets, only to have the show canceled an hour after we purchased them for the same reason.
At that point, Cliff turned to us and asked if we wanted to fly to Maine for the day to get some lobster. Kevin and I, both having never been to Maine and having never tried lobster, decided that sounded like an awesome plan. And so we switched things around, checked out of our hotel in the city early and booked something closer to JFK for our flight on Wednesday. Then we headed to Penn Station and hopped on the Long Island Railway to get to the airfield where Pamela and Cliff had their plane.
Cliff is a very experienced pilot and has been flying for over twelve years with over 2000 flight hours, which is amazing for a pilot who isn't a professional. In fact, he has flown in all fifty states, which is pretty cool. They have a six seater Malibu Jetprop (Piper Meridian), and it was so much fun to fly with them.
Cliff decided to take the route along the Hudson River so that we could not only get up close and personal with the city, but so that we could circle the Statue of Liberty, or as the tower called it, "the lady." While we were headed out along Long Island toward the city, we passed Coney Island and even had two Hawkeyes, these cool military planes fly past us.
It was so cool to have this view of the Statue of Liberty!! Not to mention seeing Ellis Island from above as well.
And let me tell you, there is nothing quite like flying alongside all the gigantic and towering skyscrapers, especially since we were pretty high up, and many of them were still higher than us. Craziness!
I also loved getting great views of the bridges and other cool things along the shoreline, like the floating park and the aircraft carrier.
We flew past Boston and up the coast, and before we knew it, we had already made it to the beautiful and snowy coast of Maine.
We flew into Portland, Maine, and aside from sneaking into a cool Stonewall Kitchen shop with Pamela, we headed straight to the Highroller to get lunch and for Kevin and I to try lobster. Kevin had a lobster cheeseburger and I had a fried lobster pop. I didn't mind the lobster, but I had made a mistake in what I ordered, because it was like a lobster corndog, and I really can't stand corndogs. Sort of ruined the experience for me, but it's all good.
Our next stop was the LL Bean flagship store in Free Port, Maine. It was a giant campus of different buildings and was so cool. I have always loved LL Bean and loved wandering around and finding amazing coats, and then reminding myself I don't need them anymore now that I live in Texas. (And probably even if I didn't, as I have a lot of coats.We wandered through a bunch more fun little shops and found some cute things to bring home, and then stopped at "Wicked Woopies," a store that only sold whoopie pies. They were such good whoopie pies, that we ended up buying some to take home, and I guess they are famous. Who knew?
Before we left Maine, we had to visit the Portland Head Light House. I wish we could have seen it during the day, but wow, it was gorgeous at night all lit up. The only problem was that my phone camera is awful in the dark, and my pictures were blurry and black. Luckily for me, not only did Cliff take some gorgeous pictures with his much better phone camera, but he shared them with me.
As we drove out to the lighthouse, the sun was just setting and it looked so beautiful along the shoreline and waterways.
We flew back to New York in the dark, which was a whole other kind of beautiful, especially the lights outlining the shoreline. Another favorite part of the flight back was learning so much from Cliff about flying and all the things that go into it. It was so cool. And he is such a good pilot that Kevin and I weren't even nervous for a second.
It was such a fabulous and unique adventure, and we felt super grateful to Pamela and Cliff for inviting us along for the ride. It was the perfect way to finish off such and amazing few days of fun with them.
We said goodbye at the airport, and we hopped on the train to take us to Jamaica, New York to our hotel. By the time we got there, it was after 9pm and I was starving, as other than some French fries and a little bit of lobster - and the whoopee pies - I had been surviving all day mostly on the free hot cocoa at the small airports. We found a chicken place across the street from our hotel where we got a very late dinner.
The next morning was rainy and dreary, but we were up early and on the train to JFK with plenty of time. And thank goodness we did, as the airport was insane, but then again, it was three days before Christmas. It reminded me once again why we usually never travel around Christmas, and definitely never fly places around then. It was one of those times when we were especially happy that we had TSA precheck, as we were able to pass the hours long line for the normal security line.
Just like when we flew to NYC, our flight to San Antonio was delayed. And then delayed again. We did eventually make it back to Texas and my mom and kids, and we although we were so happy to be home, we will be forever grateful for the fun times we had and the amazing memories we will have of this fantastic adventure with each other and with Pamela and Cliff.
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