Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Hi, everyone. This is Dawn Klem, and you are on my podcast, Milkweed and Monarchs.
[00:00:08] Today, I'm going to share the adventure of our honeymoon.
[00:00:13] And it really was an adventure.
[00:00:17] So in keeping with, you know, me being an outdoorsy type of girl, you can imagine that for our honeymoon, it was gonna be an adventure in camping, which is. I know most of my friends are like, what in the hell, Don? Are you crazy? But that's just how I am. I'd rather be outdoors than anywhere else. I just love nature, so. But you can imagine, in comparison, on Craig's first honeymoon with his ex wife, they went to a tropical island.
[00:00:54] Right. I think they went to St. Lucia.
[00:00:58] And on my first honeymoon with my ex husband, we went to Kentucky to the caves, where you can see all the Mammoth caves. Yeah, mammoth caves, where you see all the stalag delight and all that kind of stuff.
[00:01:17] So there's the difference right there between Craig and I.
[00:01:22] So he's like, well, where. What. What do you want to do? Where do you want to go? And I go, oh, I really want to go to Northern Maine. I love it up there. I had been camping there before, and I just knew he was going to love it up there too.
[00:01:38] At the time, we had just one golden retriever, Amber. And of course, we never go anywhere without our dogs. That's the long and short of it. So maybe that's another reason why we like to camp.
[00:01:51] So we loaded up the truck.
[00:01:55] It's just so funny when I look back on it, because he thinks that he's this great outdoorsman, and he can't even hold a candle to me, please. I have camped and backpacked all over the place, and he maybe did a couple of bit things in Vermont, but I would say minimal compared to what I've lived in my life. So it's just hilarious because he wants to be the expert, and I'm thinking, oh, brother, the big eye roll right from me.
[00:02:29] Not nice, but truthful. Okay, so we load up the car, and the first place I really want to take him to is Cobscook Bay up in Maine. Northern Maine. It's so one of. It's a state park.
[00:02:47] It's one of the most beautiful campsites I've ever been to.
[00:02:52] It's got hot showers there. That's another thing. Craig had never been anywhere camping where you could actually take a shower. Go. Yeah, some of the state camp campgrounds actually have hot showers. And the think about. About going to Cobbscook Bay. Very few people ever camp up there. It's way up in northern Maine. So it's not for the faint hearted, right? I mean there's no restaurants around their hotels, anything like that. It's very, very rural. But it is so beautiful.
[00:03:27] The hiking trails up there are spectacular. Spectacular.
[00:03:32] It's just a great place and it's a great place for the dog to run around too.
[00:03:37] So he's like, okay, let's see if she really knows what she's talking about. Which of course I do. I'm experienced.
[00:03:45] So we get up there and he's like oh my gosh, this is so beautiful. I go of course it is. It's spectacular.
[00:03:55] And we spent a couple nights there. He loved the fact that there were hot showers. Cost a quarter to take a shower. It's probably up to 50 cents now, but it's not very much to take a hot shower. There were very few people there. There might have been, I think there's a total of 12 campsites there. There might have been two or three other couples or families up there. Very minimal. It's not for the faint of hearted to drive all the way up Maine. It's. It's a tough terrain up there, so.
[00:04:30] But we really liked it. There's little streams, there's hiking trails.
[00:04:35] Craig really was impressed that I actually knew what I was talking about.
[00:04:41] And it was really just such a great time.
[00:04:46] So then he's, he's like, well, where are we going to go next?
[00:04:50] I said okay, well we're going to go to Lubeck.
[00:04:53] He goes, what's Lubeck? I said that is the easternmost city or community in Maine before you would get over into Canada.
[00:05:06] And he's like really? I go yeah, we're going to go there. He's like really? I go yes, we're going to go there.
[00:05:13] So that's still another long drive.
[00:05:16] I mean, I think it takes like about five hours just to get up to Cobbscook Bay.
[00:05:23] Four hours or so and then it's another three hours to get up to Lubeck. Maine is a very big state and it's very, very rural. It's very much like Minnesota, although Minnesota doesn't have the elevations and Minnesota has a lot more trees. There's a lot of trees in Maine too, but not like Minnesota. And Minnesot is the land of 10,000 lakes and Maine is on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. So you have the ocean versus lake water.
[00:06:03] So we're driving up there and there actually is a little lighthouse in Lubeck.
[00:06:09] And we got out, we had lunch and we're just checking everything out.
[00:06:16] And there's a bridge there that you can take over into New Brunswick, Canada, and that takes you to Theodore Roosevelt's summer home, Camp Bobello Island.
[00:06:32] Okay.
[00:06:34] So I'm like, yes, I want to go to that so bad. I love history and I love the outdoors. Those are two things that I feel. Feel very passionate about. So I was excited to go.
[00:06:48] So we get over there.
[00:06:51] You know, you have to go through customs and everything because you're going to Canada.
[00:06:55] So it was a little tricky because we had the dog and we had all our camping equipment and everything, but we got through. We get over to the island, and the first thing you see is this magnificent beach. Beach.
[00:07:11] It is just fantastic. And it's so pristine because there really are not a lot of people up there at all.
[00:07:21] There just aren't. It's like I said, it's an adventure, not for the fainthearted. You really have to love the outdoors to go up to do things like that.
[00:07:33] And there was the.
[00:07:36] The house. Theodore Roosevelt's house is way up overlooking the beach.
[00:07:42] And so we ventured up to that and we looked around.
[00:07:47] I don't think we could go in. It seems like we weren't allowed to go in. I don't know if it was seasonal thing, and we were there too late in the year because we went during the fall.
[00:07:59] We got married in September, so we went in September up there, there.
[00:08:04] And I think it was closed because of a seasonal thing. But what a beautiful, beautiful house. I would really love to go back sometime. It would be a good thing for us to do. Maybe when we hit our 40th wedding anniversary, we'll go back.
[00:08:23] And so we looked at that, and then Craig is like, well, what are we going to do now?
[00:08:30] I said, I don't know. Let's walk the beach and let the dog go swimming and everything.
[00:08:35] So he's like, okay, well, we started walking the beach and it was just a beautiful fall day.
[00:08:41] The dog was in heaven, I was in heaven. We were all outside, and it was later in the afternoon, and Craig's like, well, we probably should start looking for a campsite. We'll probably have to get back in the car and go back over to Lubeck and see if we can find something.
[00:09:01] Well, about that time, you start looking around and there's. There's a bunch of people up there pitching tents on the beach.
[00:09:11] I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. Craig goes, really? Anybody can just camp here? He asks somebody and they're like, yeah, you can just pitch A tent here. It's no problem.
[00:09:22] I'm like, oh, yeah, we're gonna sleep on the beach tonight.
[00:09:26] And he's like, this is so awesome.
[00:09:29] So we got the camp all set up, the tent all set up. We started a little campfire and we were. I mean, I don't think I could have ever had a better night on a honeymoon than that night. It was incredible.
[00:09:48] The stars were out.
[00:09:51] You're so far removed from, like, city life. You're just out there and away from everything.
[00:10:03] And the beach was not packed. Maybe there were four or five other campers, but not much. And we were all so far apart, spread out, that it felt like we were all alone.
[00:10:14] And it was amazing. And of course, the dog was in heaven, so Retriever couldn't keep her out of the way. Water, right? She's in and out of the water the whole time.
[00:10:25] We used to throw arrow bees to our dog. So we brought a bunch of them and we just pitch them into the water and she'd run and get them and come back. We made a little campfire and we cooked a few things, but not much because we had a lot of sandwiches and stuff in there. I didn't really know what we were going to be doing as far as food. I. I love to camp out, but I also love to eat out. There's another problem. The two don't necessarily go together. So, like, I'm on my honeymoon. I at least want to go to one restaurant, you know? He's like, oh, my God, dawn, you are insane.
[00:11:07] But we had a spectacular night under the stars in our tent with our dog on the beach.
[00:11:17] And it was really everything that I would have hoped for.
[00:11:24] So we get up the next day and he's like, where do you want to go now?
[00:11:29] I go, well, I think we should go over to Quaddy Head Lighthouse.
[00:11:34] So Quatty Head is down further on the coast of Maine. So we had to get back over to Maine and we went down to Quaddy Head.
[00:11:45] That is a spectacular place to go too.
[00:11:51] It's a candy striped lighthouse. So it's red and white striped.
[00:11:59] And they have a boardwalk all the way around it with nature trails. And you're not allowed to leave the boardwalk because the moss that's there on the sides of the trail has been there for thousands of years, according to the literature.
[00:12:19] And so you, you are surrounded by just old vegetation growing because you're not far from the coast.
[00:12:31] And it was just one of the most unbelievable things I've ever seen in my life.
[00:12:39] And you could go up into the. The lighthouse itself. And, you know, I. I fell in love with lighthouses that day. It was just one of the best trips. I think we were there probably two hours, hiking all around, looking at everything.
[00:12:59] We'd been gone for probably about five or six days.
[00:13:04] And it was good because in Copscook Bay, we could take a shower.
[00:13:10] When we were in Campobello island, we could kind of wash up in the water there.
[00:13:17] When we got to Quaddy head, though, I was saying things to him like, you know, I'd really like to spend the last couple nights, one or two nights, really, of our honeymoon maybe in a little main town, in a hotel. I'd like to. I like, I love to go camping, but it's kind of nice to sleep in a bed the last night you're out so that you get cleaned up and you're ready to make the travel trip back home.
[00:13:51] Well, he thought that was a good idea, too.
[00:13:54] And so we ended up loading up the dog and seeing what. Let's, you know, see what we can find along the way. There's plenty of little motels and around Maine. And so we didn't really even think it was going to be any issue at all for us to find something.
[00:14:15] But what we quickly found out, really, was that it was a time when dogs weren't really allowed in a hotel room.
[00:14:28] And it was a time when Craig and I were still not really used to traveling together. And Craig didn't want to leave the dog in the truck. I didn't really want to either.
[00:14:42] And so we're like. I go, you got to be kidding me. We had this great honeymoon. I couldn't have asked for anything better.
[00:14:55] Now we gotta drive home because we don't. Can't go to a hotel. Oh, my God. I was so irritated, Extremely irritated.
[00:15:06] And I really. I don't know, it just bothered me because it seemed like the ending of a great trip was not gonna be so great. You know, I was kind of sulking. I was not an easy person to get along with because I was not getting my own way.
[00:15:24] He's trying to figure out a way to, you know, make me happy. And he's like, well, maybe we should just go home. Another thing I was unhappy about, because I really wanted to stay at least another two days. We still had time off from work.
[00:15:38] Both of us have stressful jobs. I want to enjoy the time that we had. We just had a budget wedding, right? We just had the backyard wedding. So I'm like, can't we Spend a little more money. Somebody's got to allow the dog in.
[00:15:54] Well, I just didn't give up on that, and I made him stop. I mean, every time we went through, we stopped to see A, if they had a hotel room, or B, could. If they did have a room, could we bring our dog? And the answer was always no.
[00:16:12] We had gone to Camden. Camden is another great town in Maine on the coast. Spectacular.
[00:16:22] You can look out over the ocean. It's just so beautiful. They have a park there with a statue of Edna St Vincent Malay, the famous poet overlooking the harbor.
[00:16:37] I don't know. I have a soft spot in my heart for Camden.
[00:16:42] And they had a place there called the Windsor Back Chair Company, where the person that owned it made all all of these windsorbeck chairs by hand there. And it was just such a great place. And we were just convinced that we would be able to go to Camden and find a place to stay. And no, we really didn't. We really couldn't.
[00:17:10] I was aggravated, so we just kept going on down.
[00:17:15] But the one place we did get to stop in was Moody's Day Diner, another great place to go to in Maine, up the coast, south of Camden.
[00:17:27] It is nothing remarkable from the outside.
[00:17:32] I mean, it's nothing that anybody would think. Why would you want to go to Moody's Diner? Moody's Diner is actually quite famous.
[00:17:40] Many movie stars have gone there over the years. All of their pictures are up in that place.
[00:17:48] The food is all homemade and family style, so you can get a pot roast kind of dinner. You can get the mashed potatoes and gravy, that kind of thing very much. It's nothing fancy at all. The homemade strawberry rhubarb pie, the homemade ice cream, everything is homemade there.
[00:18:11] And so we did go there for kind of like our celebratory honeymoon dinner.
[00:18:21] Now, I know you guys are going, what? She is a complete nut. Maybe I am. But it was really good. And it was a good way to top off the trip, because Moody's Diner was about two hours left in the trip to get to our house.
[00:18:37] One thing I was really disappointed in, though, of all the things we took tons of pictures. We have many great pictures of the trip, and especially Quaddy Head. That was just unbelievable.
[00:18:50] But one thing I was really disappointed in is I wanted to get some kind of artwork from northern Maine at that time to, you know, kind of commemorate our anniversary. I always have these completely unrealistic expectations.
[00:19:09] I set myself up, and I set anybody else up who's with me, because if I Don't get what I want, then I'm kind of a pain in the. You know, Woody.
[00:19:18] And I really wanted a piece of artwork, even from Theodore Roosevelt. Well, they were close, so I couldn't get anything there even if I wanted to. You know, Cobscook Bay is a camping site. Campobello Island. We were on the beach, so there was no place really to get any kind of artwork. We looked when we were in Camden, but we've been to Camden so many times. I'm like, eh, you know, why am I gonna get something here? This is not really what I'm looking for. I want to get something to remind me of the great time that we had on our honeymoon.
[00:19:59] So I'm completely annoyed. Annoyed about the way the. The whole fantastic honeymoon ended and poor Craig is putting up with me having a little hissy fit in the thinking about it. You know, it's kind of funny when you think about it now, but when I look back, I'm like, what a spoiled brat. Dawn, you had such a great honeymoon, but you still had to have one thing, your own way. And of course, I didn't. I said, I'm thinking to myself, yeah, okay, you went to San Lucia on your first honeymoon, but with me, I took you camping.
[00:20:39] Come on. I'd like a little something. You know what I mean? That's so terrible. And we had the, you know, the backyard barbecue.
[00:20:47] What a monster. I am, a spoiled brat.
[00:20:51] But anyhow, so I was kind of sulking on the way home, but we managed to get home. We got everything taken care of.
[00:21:01] When we got the pictures back, I was just overjoyed with the. The pictures that we had from being up there.
[00:21:10] And all of it seemed really great.
[00:21:13] So it wasn't as much of a disappointment. I just didn't get my way at the end, and. And that's how it went.
[00:21:24] So you probably think, well, that's the end of that story, right?
[00:21:28] No, it's actually not.
[00:21:31] Because several years ago, we moved back to Michigan.
[00:21:37] And, you know, it was hard to leave Maine because I really did love camping there and going hiking and there's a lot of things about that state. And I had lived there for 25 years, so it was familiar to me. And it was kind of hard for me to leave there and come back. And I. I'm happy to be back. I'm glad I came back. I came back because my mom wanted me to come back. It really was the right thing. We got our daughters into good school system here.
[00:22:12] So many positives about moving back.
[00:22:15] But I. I still have a longing sometimes for Maine and.
[00:22:23] And so that's never going to go away.
[00:22:26] Well, we were here about two or three years, and Christmas comes around and, you know, we had all opened our presents and everything is fine, you know, and we always had great Christmases together. My mom, my daughters, and Craig and I.
[00:22:52] But this. This Christmas was particularly great.
[00:22:58] And I think it was during a time when Craig and I had celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary that year, because at the very last minute on Christmas Day, when we were opening up gifts, Craig came out with a big package for me. And I'm like, what in the world is that?
[00:23:24] What could that possibly be?
[00:23:29] So I start unwrapping it, and it comes out of the box and it's still wrapped. And I can tell now that it's quite a large picture.
[00:23:40] And I unwrap the picture.
[00:23:44] Of course, I burst out crying. I could cry right now just thinking about it. And as a matter of fact, I have the picture hanging up in my office, and I can see it as I am relaying the story to you.
[00:23:58] The picture is a picture of West Quaddy Head lighthouse.
[00:24:04] And it's absolutely beautiful, matted and framed and something that I'm going to cherish for the rest of my life because that's where we had our honeymoon.
[00:24:17] And so he starts. I started crying. My mom's like, why are you crying? And Craig goes up. I hit a home run, right?
[00:24:27] I actually did something right. I'm like, oh, come on. But I was just so happy that I have this picture now of Quest West Co head where we spent our honeymoon. And such a beautiful reminder of, you know, when we were newly married and you felt like you had the whole world licked you, you were in love, still love them, but it's a difference when it's new like that. And it just brought all those feelings back. And I thought, yep, I married the right person.
[00:25:12] I hope you enjoyed my story today.
[00:25:16] You can see how crazy I can be at times.
[00:25:22] But honestly, camping out is such a great joy to me, even on my honeymoon.
[00:25:34] Until the next time.
