Augusta, Maine.
An interesting place to be sure, and somewhere I almost skipped completely.
After leaving Belfast, Maine heading towards the mountains of New Hampshire just over the border, me and Kat were listening to whatever music was coming up through Sally’s rather fantastic sound system (Sally of course, being our rented Mustang. You can’t say we don’t have a sense of humour) and thinking about where to stop for lunch, when we came upon a bridge crossing murky waters. And just over that bridge, we caught a glimpse of colourful buildings, a castle-type looking thing, and somewhat deserted streets. Looking at each other, I remember I widened my eyes like a madman and ignoring the pleas of our GPS to “continue left- make a U-turn- take the next right-” we headed down a slope into the middle of what I now assume is the historic part of Maine’s capital.

Given the fact that it was early on a Sunday morning, the skies looked ready to crash rain down on everything, and maybe just a dash of good fortune, the streets were completely deserted. Not a single soul in sight. At first it caught us up in a mood of adventure and exploration, had us running around the streets, peering into shop windows and with me snapping photos every few feet but… that feeling slowly deteriorated into a paranoid sense of being in some kind of Zombie Apocalypse type situation after still not seeing any people around. We jogged back to Sally and locked our doors, huddled in our supposed safety. There was still a spirit of adventure though, and with Sally playings some zombie-fears-battling-music we headed deeper into the streets, catching glimpses of that murky river, and also of actual, living, inhabitants. Which was slightly disappointing, given the potential of zombies of course, but we pressed on. We actually came upon a great place to make a last stand, a historic fort, but…thats a post for later.

~m