Old Orchard - the beach, not the mall

Odometer: 14392


Gas: 2.55

Scarborough Maine is the main (no pun intended) town close to Old Orchard Beach - a place we hadn't heard of, but is incredibly popular New England summer vacation spot - and it is very popular with Cannucks too. Heard almost as much french as English, but then again, with the New England accents, it is hard to tell what they are saying in English anyway.

The campground we stayed at had VERY high ratings and we reserved one of the last three spots available for the weekend about a week before - what makes this remarkable is that including tent camping spots they have over 500 spots on the grounds. There were three lanes for incoming RVs to pull into to go to the registration office. 4 pools, 4 hot tubs, 3 playgrounds, 3 fishing ponds, 2 stores, - anyway, you get the picture, it was huge. Only gripe was I couldn't get there wireless network to sync up with the laptop, but probably my fault.

Next to our spot was the base camp of a three family get together - all three family's were from outside of Boston - the best part was they all had small children. They all became Zoe's "friends" immediately according to her. It was great for us all for her to have some same aged playmates for a few hours.

We had perfectly blue skies and 80 degree weather for our day at the beach. We went early to ensure parking. When we set up on the beach, I thought it was crowded. I was wrong. By the time we left for Zoe's nap, I had to physically ask people to move and drag the stroller over peoples towels to make it back off of the beach. Neither Missy or I had ever seen a beach where people packed themselves together so closely.


Of course we had to stop at the carousel and arcade on the way out. At the carousel, there was maybe two other parents with their kids. So as with all of the carousels we have ridden in the last 5 weeks, we bought Zoe her ticket and on this one Missy got on with her. Once on, Zoe instructed Missy to sit on the horse next to the one she had jumped on. Well, the woman operator told Missy she couldn't sit because she hadn't bought her own ticket. Missy got off the horse, but as she was Zoe started yelling: "Hey lady, my mommy ride carousel" with which turned into a verbal banter between Zoe and the operator about Missy riding. It took 3 full revolutions before Zoe stopped giving her the evil eye and would enjoy the ride.

The town itself was very similar to a typical Florida beach town. If it was the Gulf instead of the Atlantic it could have been like the Sarasota area. Lots of fun little beach homes interspersed with cheap beach toy/random shops. The funniest part was though jogging along these beach houses and seeing snow mobiles stored along the side of the homes.

Kes enjoying the tempurpedic topper.