Now, on the road and heading to get gas and air for our tire. We stop at the first gas station and I get gas but cannot for the life of me find an air pump. Inside Court and the kids are looking for small items for a breakfast. The kids decide to get some of those Little Debbie donette things and I get some soda for later but there isn't anything we want for a substantial breakfast. Okay, another gas station across the street and it has a Dunkin at it so we are hoping, get some breakfast and get some air. We pull across the street and start to pull in before we see that the line for Dunkin is literally into the street and there's no way to get to other side of the gas station from where we are because of the line of cars. Forget it, we are going to the gas station on the other side of the highway. We notice after going under the overpass both a McDonalds and Burger King near the gas station. Not ideal breakfasts but they'll work. Burger King is the choice from the car and it would be something that we would get first before looking for the air pump. As we get closer, we realize the BK is closed as it looks like it hasn't had someone there for some number of months. Fine, we'll get air and then stop at the McDonalds. This gas station has an air pump and it's actually easy to get to, if I could make up my mind on how I want Courtney to park for it. I take the little stem covers off, pay for the air, attempt to fill the lower tire up and it won't inflate. The stupid nozzle is broken. Fine, there are other gas stations on our way to the start of Route 2. We get some McDonalds and head off. The next location on Google Maps that is listed as a gas station is actually a gas company, like for home heating, so that doesn't work. On to the next. Finally we get to a station with a pump and it's free! This concerns Court as nothing is free in MA so she asks the guy who was there ahead of us and he confirms. Fill up the tires and away we go.
We arrive at what we are going to call the start of Route 2 for our purposes as it technically starts at the border crossing and take some pictures. This area is right up against an airport which provides some nice views. From where we are standing we can see the customs checkpoint for the border which was kind of fun being that close. Pack everyone back in and we start driving off. A lot of cute views of little towns and warnings that buggies will be sharing the road with the cars. So maybe our guess last night about Amish crossing the highway wasn't too far off. We drove on for most of the day before we did finally see someone in a true buggy on the street although we did almost immediately see a guy working a field with a team of horses.
The next area of what looks like an actual city is Bangor and we arrive for lunch. We decide to eat at a local sandwich shop, The Legendary Sandwich. I place an order on what Google claims is their website as we get close and arrive. It's a bit of a run down looking place from outside. We head in to look for drinks or maybe chips from some local place as well. When we head in the guy asks if we are the GrubHub order. I inform him that we ordered on their website. He informs me they don't have an online shop for ordering. Back and forth a bit with the guy before he informs me that my order is the GrubHub order. Okay, as long as the food is ordered and the money isn't just gone you can call it whatever you like. The good news, there were some new flavors of Mountain Dew for the summer that I was looking forward to trying and they had them! Grabbed a few of them. Away we go again expecting to be able to eat these and drive. Court's sandwich is a true sub while the rest of us have bulkies. On her sandwich for some reason this place puts the meat on top of the veggies which were inside the bread. Strange and proves to be a bit messy to eat. There is a spill of some of the veggies and it's the start of the curse of the first day fight.
We keep moving along. Along the path from my research there are a lot of muffler men statues of Paul Bunyan. I had originally scheduled us to stop at one in Bangor but with the before metioned fight we miss out on it. Eventually we stop at a park that has one complete with Babe. It's a cute little park with a nice view of a lake with a hydroplant. We look around and take some pictures. A call is made part of the way through the day to attempt to make it to Burlington beacuse Gideon's favorite burger place behind Five Guys is there, Grazers. This proves to be a long haul but we make it! We are sat in a booth that Court and I could lay down in the space between our side of the booth and the table. We ask to move and get shifted to another table. Our waitress comes and moves the table from the old booth we had to be in the middle between the two seats as if to show us that that was all we needed to do. Now the distance between the table and the seat on both sides is way too much. Whatever, we order the food and have a great dinner.
On the way to the hotel for the night from the dinner and the check engine light comes on in the van. Great, here we are in Vermont and now we need to determine if we can keep going or not. It's already too late to do anything about it tonight so Court checks the gas cap just in case that's the problem after we pulled in to the hotel and we decide we'll figure out what to do about it tomorrow. We check in and get up to the room and it is hot. Granted I'm warm almost all of the time but I just cannot get comfortable. It also smells like smoke. We call down to just have it recorded that it smelled like smoke when got here and to ask for some more towels since there were four of us and only two towels. The guy comes to the room with the towels and offers to spray the room with a deodorant for the smoke. We pass on the spray. We forgot some other stuff in the van so Abby and I go down to get it and while we are down there the car next to us starts having the lights flash and we hear it unlocking and locking. I ignore it thinking that they are coming out too like we were to get some stuff. Abby and I finish up and start heading back when I realize that this jerk is in his room, watching us and thinking we are going to break into his car and that his doing this is somehow going to stop us. First of all let me point out that this is no special car and while I didn't scout it, it doesn't appear to have anything special in it. I almost want to attempt to take something now with him watching just to prove a point that it does nothing but it's obviously not worth it. Back into the sauna and sleep for the night.