#i also realized that google has dog shit pictures of all these places good lord

[griffther]

i can't stop thinking about this so i'm going to add the pics of these places for you all to look at while i procrastinate actually writing it

(im going to go in the order that i mention them above, not in the order they would be visiting them just btw)

starting off strong with the places in portland, we have:

the portland museum of art (fun building, cool art)

old port (it's hard to find a single picture that captures the Vibes of this place very well, but it's basically a huge modern functional port built over the old historic port and it's created a very cool little shop area)

the portland head light (i took these two pics, the first is looking at the lighthouse and the second is the view from the lighthouse)

top of the world (this is another pic of mine and it isn't the best but i couldn't find a better one online, this is just a little lookout at a park at the top of a hill that looks out over portland and the bay)

now moving on from portland, we have rockland (a cute little fishing/port town that has a shit ton of lobstering)

rockland breakwater lighthouse (these are also my pics again, this is a tiny little lighthouse built out at the end of an almost mile long breakwater, meaning you can go walk out to it)

stephen king's house in bangor (once again my pics. i am dex in this situation, i was dragged along to go see some dude's house and the fence was cool and he had some wooden outdoor art but otherwise it was mostly just a victorian style new england home idk)

freeport (a whole little town built to look like the perfect new england town - my mom compares it to stars hollow from gilmore girls - including everything from the mcdonalds to the giant 5 building 24 hour l.l. bean campus)

ogunquit (i have no clue how to describe the vibes of this place and i can't find any good pics online, but it's like if a whole town was having a pride festival year round. everything is covered in rainbows, it's wild)

moose point state park (one of my pics again, this is a cute little state park south of bangor that isn't special in any way, i just like it)

camden hills state park (it's pretty and is known for being great to go leaf peeping in the fall. too bad the fog is gonna stop our boys from being able to see any of this lmao)

the desert of maine (exactly what it sounds like, it's a patch of sand dunes in the middle of a forest - it was caused by a glacier leaving behind mineral deposits - and it's a massive tourist attraction here. i personally have actually never been there, but most mainers hold a base line level of animosity towards it bc of the shitty experiences everyone seems to have had there)

cushing (this is the olson house in cushing where andrew wyeth stayed and that featured in a number of his paintings including his most famous piece Christina's World)

and last but not least, acadia national park (rated as one of the top 5 national parks in the country, acadia is gorgeous. it's got a lot of cool spots all over, but sargent mtn/the jordan pond loop is the coolest to me because i like being up high and getting to see everything lol)

there’s so many ppl enabling me in the notes of this post, so here enjoy some Thoughts i’ve had about the nurseydex maine road trip so far:

they do a road trip up the coast of maine over fall break their senior year so that nursey can see acadia national park while the leaves are changing

william “acts of service” poindexter decides that it is his Responsibility as nursey’s captain and fellow d-man to become maine’s official tour guide barbie. he plans the entire thing out and even prints them little itineraries and maps and shit because this boy is nothing is not Efficient

nursey makes them stop to see every single lighthouse they go anywhere near just to be a little shit (there are 65 lighthouses in maine, this would take So Long even if you just stopped at like a quarter of them)

the only canonical reference i could find for any actual locations in maine in the comic is that dex said his uncle who owned the lobster fishing boat he worked on over the summers lived in portland

(a side note to the above, i find this hilarious. portland is an pretty solidly liberal urban city - imagine a very small boston - and not somewhere you’re very likely to find small family-owned lobster fishing boats, at least in my experience. it would make way more sense for his uncle to live somewhere like rockland but i digress)

dex is 100% positive that nursey would Love portland so he carves out two whole days of their trip for them to stay with his uncle and explore. they go to the art museum and old port and the port head lighthouse and the top of the world lookout at fort sumner park and all the little shops and hidden places dex had found from living there every summer for years

nursey does end up loving portland but it might be more about the boy that shows it to him

even though his uncle lives in portland, i am still personally convinced that dex’s family mostly lives around the rockland area. i will go on a rant about nursey meeting dex’s close family another time, but while they’re in rockland, nursey continues his dedication to seeing all the lighthouses he can by forcing dex to make the almost mile long trek out to the breakwater lighthouse with him (don’t think about them standing alone next to this little building almost a mile out from land. the wind is chilly and strong and it makes dex’s hair look ridiculous and his cheeks flush and nursey definitely doesn’t want to kiss him ITS FINE ITS CHILL)

dex has them make a detour up to bangor and surprises nursey with going to see stephen king’s house. he doesnt understand why people are interested in looking at some dudes house At All but he does know nursey would love it so he does it anyways. the fence is cool and nursey gets so excited he almost face plants jumping out of the car, so dex counts it as a success

some random places i feel like dex would make them stop at along the way: freeport (nursey is both so confused and so delighted by just Everything about that place, but he loses his mind over the mcdonald’s and the ll bean outlet), ogunquit (dex purposefully takes highway 1 instead of the maine turnpike going towards portland so that they drive through ogunquit and he can see nursey’s face when he realizes they’re driving through the single gayest town he’s ever seen in his life and it’s in southern maine), moose point state park (there are a billion lil state parks in maine but i just randomly like this one in particular idk i think it’s cute), camden hills state park (it’s too foggy when they get there to drive up to the top so nursey makes them go on a hike instead so they didn’t “waste their time.” they get lost within like 10 minutes and are wet from the fog by the time they make it back to the car like 2 hours later), the desert of maine (it’s kinda boring to dex bc he’s seen it a dozen times since he was a kid, but nursey gets enthralled by the science behind it so it’s worth it), cushing (this is where the famous painter andrew wyeth lived at the olson house and was the subject of a lot of his work and i just feel like nursey would have fun seeing this place)

when they eventually make it to acadia, nursey ends up spending like two solid hours just sitting at sargent peak staring out over everything and desperately scrawling out lines of poetry into his notebook (dex spends most of those 2 hours staring at nursey but somehow doesn’t notice that nursey definitely isn’t writing about the scenery)