Kittery & Portsmouth
- otomola
- Jul 14, 2025
- 15 min read
Kittery, Maine and Portsmouth, New Hampshire
July 8-14, 2025.
Life has an interesting way of unfolding …
I had left Danbury on June 15 heading for Franconia Notch State Park. A friend, Beth, who I had not seen in nearly 50 years, responded to a Franconia post I put on Facebook that she was living in Kittery (Maine). She invited me to stop by and see her. Beth is the sister of one of my closest friends in high school, David, who passed away in the mid 1990s. She is a year younger than David. She was also a bridesmaid in our wedding (Yes, I was married then, to a woman named Marilyn, 1975-1984.) Beth moved to New Hampshire not long after the wedding. We became friends on Facebook within the past few years, and that’s how she knew I was at Franconia Notch.
At Franconia, I was meeting Linda, a woman I had met traveling at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in November, 2023. We have stayed in touch texting and phone calls. Linda has been on the road for about two years. We met “recently” at Davis Bayou Campground in Mississippi in January 2025, and she has wandered up here into New England on her way to the Canadian Maritimes.
From Franconia Notch, I went next to a couple of U.S. National Forest campgrounds, Hastings and Dolly Copp, near Gorham, NH. Linda went to other places. While near Gorham, I was going to have normal maintenance done on my van at the local Dodge dealer, Berlin City Auto Group. They were also going to do a safety recall on the van, something to do with a software update for the rear-view camera.
Upon my arrival at the dealership, I was informed they could do the maintenance work (change the oil and do diagnostics), but they could not do the safety recall. I was told they were not an authorized ProMaster dealer. (My van is a Dodge RAM ProMaster 3500.) Apparently, not all Chrysler-Dodge-RAM dealers can do warranty work on ProMasters. I would have to find a different dealer for the safety recall. They apologized for not letting me know this, saying the person who scheduled my appointment did not know they were not able to do that work on ProMasters.
I had them do the maintenance work. I went online looking for other Dodge RAM dealerships to find one that could work on ProMasters and do the safety recall. I found one in Portsmouth, NH, Key Chrysler Dodge RAM, about 100 miles south. I made an appointment there to do the safety recall on Monday, July 14.
After completing the normal maintenance work, Berlin City also notified me that the left front axle assembly was leaking fluid, and it was critical that I have it repaired ASAP.
An interesting point is that no-one came to me in the waiting area to explain the axle situation. I received a text message with a link. The link led to a report on the service appointment. In a red-coded area, with the words REQUIRED on it, was information and several photographs of the axle assembly and area surrounding it, showing oil that has splattered. There were also two checkboxes, one to have them complete the work for $658 and one to decline.
I walked to the service desk to discuss this, as I was pretty certain this was a warranty issue. They agreed, and once again told me they could not do the work, since they were not a ProMaster service dealer. This was troublesome. I inquired about driving it. Was it safe? If so, how far could I drive it? Could I drive it one hundred miles? Two hundred?
My current plans had me going to other campgrounds with total distance being around 300 before I’d arrive at the dealer in Portsmouth. I was told it was probably okay to drive it, but there were no guarantees. They said, “You don’t want to drive it too far. If it leaks completely there could be other damage done,” and something about overheating and the wheel bearings being damaged …
I called back to the Dodge dealer in Portsmouth to add the axle work to my appointment on July 14. I spoke with a service advisor named Michael, explaining my situation. I had since determined the distance I need to drive to be around 220 miles. He asked me to send him the link with the axle information, so he could look at the photos and see what had been documented. Later he called me back and told me yes, they could fix it, and he thought, based on the photos, it would be fine to drive the van the miles I needed to cover. He mood sounded reassuring rather than warning.
Meanwhile, I had called Beth and told her I had to bring my van to the dealership in Portsmouth. I asked her if I might be able to park in her driveway. (Kittery is right next to Portsmouth). I would arrive Sunday morning, July 13, and we could spend the day catching up. I would bring the van in Monday morning. That was good for her. She had actually gone away, traveling, and planned to return to Kittery on Friday, July 11.
So now, I was going to be able to see Beth and have the van worked on in one, convenient environment. The dealership was only 2.5 miles from her house.
So, I continued my travel plans, going to Crawford Notch (about thirty miles) July 1-3 and back to Franconia Notch (about another thirty miles) July 4-6. But I was hesitant to do the next stop, which was to go back to Dolly Copp July 7-12. It would be a shorter drive, by about sixty miles, to head directly south to Portsmouth. I was a little apprehensive about driving it at all.
I called the dealership Monday morning (July 7) and they said they could do the work Wed (July 9). I texted Beth to ask about staying at her place earlier. She said that would be great. She had also changed plans and would be home Monday night, then she was going away Tuesday morning on a motorcycle trip with some friends, to Franconia Notch, and I could park in her driveway and use the house while she was away. She would be back on Friday.
I arrived at her house 8:30 Tuesday morning and we started catching up after nearly fifty years of not seeing each other. We were able to hang out a couple hours before another woman showed up on her motorcycle, and they left to meet two others before heading to Franconia. Before that, we took a short walk into the little town of Kittery. I have heard so much about Kittery being a great place to shop at the outlets from my Mom and others. But now I learned there is a little part of Kittery, at least, that is rustic and quaint. This little section has a few small stores, restaurants, coffee shops, the Kittery Arts Association, and the Kittery Library. And a bicycle shop! It’s right near an entrance to the Portsmouth Naval Yard, which is actually in Kittery, not Portsmouth!
I took the van into the dealership Wednesday morning, and they did the repairs. Just in case anyone wondered if life on the road is all fun and games. Yes, most of the time, but not always. as evidenced by this experience.
But, now back to the fun & games!
Beth lives near Memorial Bridge, which is one of three bridges that connects Kittery to Portsmouth, Maine to New Hampshire. It is about a mile walk from her house to downtown Portsmouth. I walked over the bridge several times into town. I had no idea what a neat little bustling place it was! There are many shops, art galleries, restaurants, coffee shops, etc. It’s very entertaining. They have a fantastic library.
I went to the Portsmouth public library on Wednesday to see an event put on by The Center for Wildlife. It is an organization that takes in animals that for some reason can no longer live on their own safely in the wild. The event featured three of their “ambassadors,” an Eastern Screech Owl, a Barred Owl, and a Great Horned Owl. It was about an hour long, interesting and fantastic.
Lucy, the Screech Owl, fell out of her nest with her three siblings. The woman who found the four owls, called the Center for Wildlife and told them. But she only mentioned three and kept one as a pet until at some point she realized she could not properly care for her, then she called and told The Center of her plight. By that time, it was too late to introduce Lucy into the wild. She would not learn to find food and do other natural owl things in the wild. She is about 5” tall and weighs about two ounces, eats two mice per day. Like other owls, she has massive eyes, compared to body size, and has great vision. But owls cannot move their eyes side to side or up and down. They move their heads instead, able to turn their necks so far they can see behind them. According to the American Bird Conservancy, owls can rotate their necks 270 degrees around and 90 degrees up and down. They can tilt their head back and look straight up!
Fern, a Barred Owl, was hit by a car and suffered traumatic brain injury. She has a mate, Byron. Barred owls, like many other owl species, are monogamous. They mate for life, Fern has raised orphan owls at the center, too. In the wild, Barred Owls require an area of about six square miles, their territory.
Gaia, the Great Horned Owl, fell out of her nest as a baby and broke her spine. She also has a mate, Galileo, and she has raised orphan owls. She weighs about five pounds. Great Horned Owls are at the top of the food chain regarding predator birds. They hunt many other animals, including rodents, skunks, other birds, some reptiles, and even porcupines.
After the library, I walked around downtown for a couple hours, visiting shops and chit-chatting with a few people before returning to Beth’s in Kittery. I was amazed at how many shops there were downtown. It was nicely entertaining. One place I stopped at is a new bookstore, Reedmor Books and Brews. It opened in December, 2024. It is a small, yet well-stocked place. Upon entering, one can walk to the right into the bookstore or to the left into a bar. I went into the bookstore and was enthusiastically welcomed by a woman, Nissi, the owner. I browsed about fifteen minutes, not buying anything, then continued on my way.
I arrived back at Beth’s thinking to myself, “Is that some kind of chain store I did not know about?” It was a smallish bookstore, maybe about 700 square feet. That means limited space and a necessity to select books thoughtfully. There is only so much shelf space. That would require a knowledgeable person. I thought maybe it is a chain of small bookstores, perhaps franchised, with a central administrative system that had a formula for selecting books and stocking the store. I learned from their website that is not the case.
It is a singular, small business, owner operated, that opened in December 2024. There is a story about the origin on the Reedmor website, with attribution to Nissi Bagelman. I had overheard a conversation in the store, a customer asking the woman at the desk if she was the owner. She said she was. So, I am thinking Nissi is the owner. She was energetic and welcoming.
Books are not the only product in the business. When one comes in the front door, the bookstore is a right hand turn. If one turns left after entering, there is a small bar, where alcohol and non-alcohol beverages are available: coffee and tea, wine and beer. There are also several more bookshelves that are stocked, a continuation of the store.
It also turns out that Linda, my friend from Washington State, was staying in Portsmouth July 9-14. On Thursday, I met her downtown for an early lunch. We went to Ceres Bakery. It was a neat little place with upbeat workers dressed not uniformly, showing a great deal of originality. It is a busy, friendly place with a colorful array of people, employees and customers. The place had art on the walls and a great variety of bakery goods, sandwiches, and soups.
After lunch, we walked around town for several hours, stopping into shops and galleries, talking with the owners and workers at places, learning about the town and their place in it. We stopped in Reedmor Books, Pickwick’s Mercantile (Linda picked up a mineral stone), the New Hampshire Art Association, the Thornhill Art Gallery, the Village Silversmith (we both acquired some mineral stones), A Pleasant Shoppe (more art), and Danforth Pewter. We browsed and had conversations with people in each place. After about four hours of this tour, we ended up at Cup of Joe’s for some coffee and tea, where Linda also bought a book.
When we went into the Reedmor, Nissi was not there. We were greeted by another woman, Cari. She was also energetic and welcoming, all positive vibes and communication. The three of us had an interesting conversation. She said she normally worked in the bar area of the business. She enjoyed being here on the other side, in the bookstore, one day a week.
Linda picked up a few different books and one by one had a little conversation with Cari about them. I had never heard of the authors of which they spoke. Linda really liked one, a guy named Frederik Backman, saying she likes anything of his. He is Swedish, and his books have to be translated into English. Cari noted how translation is a very special skill.
It turns out, Cari is a writer, too. She is getting a master’s degree in writing and teaching writing at the college. She has also traveled working in a band, though she did not say what her involvement was. Musician, song writer, crew of some sort? We all talked about the travel world, the moving and moving, the meeting of new people on a frequent basis, and the reality that most of the people you meet, you will never see again. You can have some great conversations, though most are not too deep, and then you will be going separate ways. But it was great that sometimes you meet people and have friendships that continue, grow, etc.
On Friday (7/11), Beth and I walked over Memorial Bridge into Portsmouth and had tea and coffee at Ceres. It turns out Beth has been to and likes Ceres a lot, too. They have great muffins and baked goods!
That afternoon, I took a bike ride to Ogunquit. It began as an exploratory ride to see what the roads were like locally. I found the roads were good! They had a nice, paved surface most of the way with lots of curves and several small, rolling hills. I passed along harbors and beaches, inspirational views of bays and the ocean, well-kept properties with abundant flower gardens. I took RT 102 to York, where it met with RT 1A. From there the road passed by York Harbor, then passed a huge RV Park, Libby’s, just before the beach. York’s Long Beach runs a couple of miles. It is totally sandy with a line of hotels and home rentals on the non-beach side of the road. In contrast to most of the ride, this area was highly commercial. I passed through the tourist shop town of York, then took a right from RT 1A onto Shoreline Road. There was a one-mile stretch where the road was very bumpy with repairs. It was about four miles from York to the Ogunquit Museum of American Art. The grounds at the Museum were naturally beautiful with flowers and other plant life. There were numerous artistic items placed on the lawns. I turned around there and returned to Kittery, covering about forty miles round-trip.
That afternoon, I drove up to Kennebunk to check out the Brick Store Museum and the downtown area. There was both free admission to the Museum and an Art Walk on the Second Friday every month, so I picked a good day to go! I was somewhat unimpressed with the Brick. There was an exhibit on the ocean on the first floor that seemed outdated. The walls were covered with information that seemed old and there were several typos on the displays. The upper floor had a number of paintings, portraits of prominent citizens of Kennebunk from the 1800s mostly.
I walked up and down York Street, which seems to be the "downtown" of Kennebunk. There were artists displaying their work in several places. I talked with three artists in front of one building who had their art on tables on the lawn. I was drawn to it by drawings of owls one of them had done. She said the paintings were each done from photographs. We talked about local owls, them telling me they hear Barred Owls frequently, occasionally they see a Snowy Owl and Great Horned Owl. At another display, I talked with a woman who had taken up painting and drawing after retirement and had gravitated to a focus on drawing a variety of seaweeds. Not something one sees often, in my experience, and an interesting topic.
Next day, Saturday, in the afternoon Beth and I visited Fort Foster, a Kittery park a few miles north along RT 103. We took a hike along the coastline. It was very foggy to start. We could only see about 100 yards out on the water. The shoreline had a combination of rocky outcrops and sandy beach. There were many people there, yet it was not crowded at all.
Walking with Beth, and talking in that beautiful, natural setting, was a fun experience. She’s David’s sister. It did not strike me at the time, but now that I am writing about it, I am thinking of the many times David and I walked on the beach in Gloucester, MA in our high school hitchhiking days. He and I had many of those internal, heart to heart talks on our walks. And now here I was walking with his sister over fifty years since those days. Walking with Beth has a similar level of comfort, despite it being nearly fifty years since I had seen or talked with her. There’s a surrealist aspect to it.
On the way back, we went to that local bicycle shop in Kittery. She had dropped off her sister’s bike for a tune-up and new tires. While she spoke with the shop owner, I noticed a Specialized S-Works bike leaning against another building, a small restaurant with craft beers. I said hi and struck up a conversation with the biker, asking about rides in the area. It turns out he was visiting from Syracuse. Coincidently, he had arrived the day before, and he had done a very similar ride as I had that day, up to the York area and back. He was in town visiting a friend and also doing some work. I asked what he did for work. He has a business that cleans out the lines associated with beer kegs, the beer running from where the kegs area stored up to the taps at the bar. He said it’s not hard work, but for some reason, a lot of restaurant owners do not like to do it. I guess one can make a business out if it …
Beth and I went for another walk that night, stopping off at Prescott Park to see amazing gardens at the park. The variety of flowers and the brilliance of the colors throughout were fantastic, smile producing. There is a huge stage in the park for musical groups, theatre, and dance. The Prescott Arts Festival was founded in 1974.
On Sunday afternoon, Beth and I walked over to Portsmouth again and met Linda. We went to another rock-mineral shop, Scallops Mineral & Shell, each of us finding something to buy. I bought a small prism. From there off we went for lunch at a place called The Works. The food was good, the conversation was friendly, fun, and welcoming. After lunch, we headed to Beth’s over the drawbridge. The sirens wailed just as we approached it, so we were treated to the rise of the road, lifted by some fantastic engineering feat. The section of road that is lifted is 115 of my paces. I counted as I walked over it, so it over 100 yards long, an abundance of steel and concrete. The entire road is lifted up about twenty yards high while boats pass under. It was a photo opportunity, too, as we snagged some nice people passing by to take a picture of the three of us.
When we arrived at Beth’s, we hopped in her car and drove off to Fort Foster again. This time the three of us did some rock hunting. There are a few places on the beach that are covered with water-shaped rocks of a variety of colors. Most were smooth and well-rounded by thousands of years of massaging by the water. Beth was “shopping” for some rocks for her daughter’s garden. Linda and I were collecting some smaller pieces that seemed unique or special. We walked back to the car with some wonderful rocks, inspiring, as if they were pieces of art.
On Monday, Beth and I did a bike ride south down to New Castle and Wentworth-By-The-Sea. We stopped at a local park and took some photos, noticing that we were directly across from Fort Foster on the other side of the river, though as I said, it seems more a part of the ocean at this point. We knew it was Fort Foster because we could see the old Coast Guard house on the island and the lighthouse.
While taking photos here, another one of those “it’s a small world” things happened. There was a woman there with her Godparents and her young daughter. We started talking. Looking out on the water, the woman suddenly shouted “There’s Jack’s boat!” as there was a boat going out on the water, adding that Jack took the mail daily out to an island community. Jack was her father-in-law. Beth then told her she had been on that boat, the mail boat, about a week earlier, as it had been used in a memorial service. Someone was placing a loved one’s ashes in the sea, and Beth was part of the group witnessing it.
It is a small world, and you realize that when you start conversations, reaching out to others, expanding your world …
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