From Greenbelt, Maryland to Cape Elizabeth, Maine (just south of Portland) is 539 miles and $23.43 in tolls (yes, some obstreperous place in New York charges a $1.43 toll -- probably an encouragement to stop paying in cash).

The highest toll is at the George Washington Bridge in NYC -- $6.

As I was cooing to him in the driveway, the landlady came out to shush him, and we got to talking about the weather, and she interrogated me about the apartment (she is concerned that it be as comfortable and welcoming as possible and wanted to enforce that I should not clean it before leaving), and we chatted about the inn across the street, and dear god I got the shit bit out of me by mosquitos to a degree that I had not experienced since summers in Minnesota.

Half an hour later, after a cold bath, liberal Stingeze, and Benadryl, my calves and ankles still feel like they are right now being stung by a horde of mosquitos.

I've been breaking my way through a set of four petite green Ikea mugs. I only have one left, and finding replacements has proved difficult as Ikea stopped producing them some time ago. They're small -- perhaps 8 oz when the standard mug size is 10-14 oz -- and narrow of mouth, so they keep my coffee warmer longer than the average large-top-surface-area mug. I've been through two sets of thrift-store mugs trying to find a new likable hot beverage receptacle, but nothing has managed filled their .. erm .. saucers.

Kittery Outlets has three dedicated crockery marts in addition to a Crate and Barrel, so I was optimistic.

I took an unhelpful turn through Pfaltzgraff, elected to skip the Corelle store, and went into Villeroy & Boch without expecting much. After all, their website promised such gems as the Cottage Mug and the French Garden Fleurence Mug:

But, crammed in the tiny clearance closet, delightfully-green mugs!

I bought six originally-$22 mugs for $4 each. Perhaps they will last me more than six months. It's a good thing that I visited the Hideous Floral Mug Mart: Crate and Barrel had zilch.

Hot days call for ice cream when you're on vacation and it's only a quarter mile away, so upon returning home with two hot bottles of water, I ditched the car and set off for the ice cream hut with an umbrella. Kettle Cove Take-Out and Dairy Bar is a local mainstay for beachgoers, and they make all their own ice cream on location. As I strolled home attending to a waffle cone full of peanut butter oreo, I got a thumbs-up and a declaration of ice-cream-umbrella-strolling approval from a woman on a front porch.

I have pleased the locals.

Apparently I shouldn't leave the house.

Cape Elizabeth has a single restaurant with an uninspiring menu, so I dug into my brochures and started visiting websites. Things are spread out here, so the nearest cluster of good restaurants that isn't in Portland (and we're certainly not going there -- I don't want to end up at Maine Mall again) is 45 minutes away, south down the coast in Kennebunk. The restaurants right in town all called for reservations during the peak season, and I dislike crowds, so I selected one which said it was off the beaten path in Kennebunkport (which is, as you'll guess if you're familiar with the Maine naming convention, near Kennebunk, but closer to the sea). Google directions in paw, I set off down Route 1, the coastal highway, and somewhere past getting off Route 1 onto a small coastal highway, I found myself no longer on the map.

I can follow directions in Maryland. What's wrong with me here? Compass needle confused by the closer proximity to the north pole?

I pulled into a gas station, and the kind proprietor said I shouldn't be taking Route 1 south at all, as it would be slow. She offered to Mapquest me to my destination. Some minutes later (wireless printer), she returned with a sheet of directions .. which went down Route 1. She snuffled indignantly and decided that she'd dictate directions down I-95. She didn't know how I'd get to the restaurant from I-95, mind you, but said there would be an exit labeled Kennebunkport. Oh dear.

I figured that between my mobile Google Maps and the reverse directions I'd printed, which took me to an intermediary shop and then back home by way of I-95, I should be able to get there. All the way down I-95, I kept routing from my present location to the restaurant in Google Maps, and at every step of the way, it claimed that I should turn around, go back up I-95, and get onto Route 1 south. Good grief. Even after I got off 95 at the Kennebunk exit, it continued to claim this.

I was at this point attempting to follow my directions home backwards, which isn't as straightforward as it sounds, because Maine coastal highways like to take turns at intersections instead of going straight through and the like. After stopping in a residential neighborhood to reroute now that I had an address to feed into Google, I did eventually arrive, an hour and a half after leaving home.

I feasted on lobster-stuffed portobello and strawberry shortcake at Lucas on 9 and returned home without mishap.

Today I'm off to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay Harbor. Google is again suggesting that I go through Portland, but I'm wise to its nefarious tricks.

I ran into the lady whose house my lodgings are attached to on the way back. She gave me a plastic bag and some tupperware and told me that I might be able to find sand dollars at the next beach down the coast. Whee! She's also very interested in my jewelry and wanted to see some. Drat! Who knew that I should take my inventory with me on vacation?

It's cold here at night.

Probably due to the proximity to the sea, the humidity here makes it colder instead of warmer. (Maryland should try that.) The humidity here is visible. When I woke up this morning (at 5:30 because I whacked out my internal clock by getting up at 4:30 yesterday), I could just barely see the neighboring house, only 40 feet away. The low-hanging mist didn't clear until 11am, and then I was amazed to watch it still rolling in over the trees at noon. All the way to Portland, great, tall of masses of mist coming from the shore.

So off I went to Freeport, 25 miles up the coast, home of the flagship LL Bean store. I had heard it was worth seeing. Cape Elizabeth, where I am hanging my hat -- er, computer? -- for the week, is directly on the other side of Portland (the local metropolis) from Freeport, so I was faced with the choice of driving alllll the way west to I-95 on wee little coastal roads, or cutting through Portland. Google said I should cut through Portland, so I did.

Google impolitely tried to send me the wrong way down a one-way road in Portland, but this was in the griddy portion, so I was able to correct by going around a block, and I arrived in Freeport unscathed. Freeport is a walkably petite town full of outlet stores. The LL Bean store is nothing to write home about (which is precisely what I'm doing, so .. hrm), but it does have a large boot made of sand outside.

Freeport also abounds with small boutiques, like Wicked Whoopies, which I felt obliged to photograph for my friend Michael. (It's a bakery -- whoopies are apparently some ghastly marshmallow concoction.)

I had cleverly thought at the last minute to print directions home, cities being precocious beasts that don't necessarily allow one to go back the way one came. The reverse directions were different, so I congratulated myself on my foresight.

The trip back through Portland went fairly smoothly until it came time to drive back across Casco Bay. I couldn't find the bloody bridge. My directions purported that it would be a right turn from the road I was driving on, yet I ended up driving around the rim of Casco Bay, looking forlornly out to the bridge on my left which was, I was certain, where I should have been. Combined with its earlier attempt to get me killed on a one-way street, I was also certain that Google Maps was out to get me. I tried turning around, I tried driving on large roads that proclaimed a southerly direction, and eventually I gave up finding my own way. I happened across an exit labeled with a road name that I vaguely recognized as having been a party to my original journey from I-95 to Cape Elizabeth on the way up, so I took it. It delivered me to a mall.

Fortunately, it was a mall of which Google is aware, and I was able to route myself from the mall back to the house using Google Maps. After some initial false starts getting from the parking lot to the spot on the contortional network of nearby roads that Google identified as the starting point, I navigated home. As you know if you've ever had to drive by yourself using the turn-by-turn directions in Google Maps on an iPhone, this is a somewhat tenuous venture. The type is small, the buttons to advance to the next step are somewhat small if you're simultaneously driving and squinting at tiny street signs, and Google Maps has the irritating behavior of zooming way out and then back in between each step. Nevertheless, I am here at the kitchen table in my temporary roost, not lost in the suburban wilderness. iPhone, I forgive you for your imperfections, be they many.

At 4:30pm, I was out near I-95, and it was hot and sunny. As I wound toward the coast on the two-lane 45 mph road that brings one eventually to Cape Elizabeth, the clouds of mist that had been rolling in over the trees when I left were still at it. By 5pm when I was driving along the coast, the thick overhead mist had blotted out the sun. I could tell from a general brightness that the sun was still bare, not covered with clouds, but it had completely disappeared from view.