after visiting auntie m we stopped for the night in augusta, maine and headed out the following morning to finish the final leg of our trip ending in machias.

but about 60 miles from our final destination we couldn't pass up making a stop at a local favorite in ellsworth, maine - jordan's snack bar which is well known to have some of the best crab and clam rolls in the area.

unfortunately the coastal region is suffering from a recurring harmful algal bloom known as red tide which prevents the harvest of seafood and forces the already inflated summer tourist prices to go even higher.

and since i'm not willing to pay nearly ten dollars for a hotdog bun stuffed with seafood, we decided to opt for a much cheaper hotdog washed down with a chocolate shake.

after i ordered the food i remembered that for some reason the locals prefer their hotdogs pumped full of something that makes them a suspiciously bright red color.

oh well, we were so hungry that we ate them anyway, even as odin seemed to be looking at them with a wary eye.

at our final stop before completing the The Grand Adventure i was able to finally sit back and believe with some confidence that the galaxie was going to actually make it the rest of the trip without any more mishaps.

various people have wondered if perhaps i'd knocked loose some part of brain when i hatched the plan to drive a forty year old car over a thousand miles. "bah!" i say. you only live once. i might have made a different decision had i known we'd be driving in 90+ degrees F the entire trip. or maybe not. all i know is that despite the occasional issues, it was fun seeing all the smiles and enthusiatic "thumbs up" from strangers all along the route.

i have no idea why i take so much pleasure in striking up a conversation with an elderly gas station who smiles a broad toothless grin when he sees me pull up to the pump, or a toll booth employee who doesn't mind holding up traffic as he tries to guess the year the car was made or a curmudgeonly alternator repair guy who fixes my faulty alternator for free because he just doesn't see too many galaxies anymore. but i do and i guess that's good enough for me.

of course, as i was taking this picture, i noticed that the exhaust system was hanging a little lower than when i started the trip. if you look close you can see a the pipe running from the exhaust manifold to the muffler, looking like it's a few inches closer to the ground than it should be.

i guess i'll have to take a look at that sooner rather than later.

for the curious, the sign i parked under is indicating the distance to campobello island in new brunswick, canada which is a short drive from our final stop in machias, maine and an even shorter drive from the eastern most town in the united states, lubec, which, incidentally, is where one of odin's great grandfathers grew up as a young boy.

the island has quite a history and if my memory serves me well, is very beautiful.