As usual, I used the internet to plan our trip.  One problem was that I didn't start making reservations until August and many of the hotels and inns were almost booked solid for the fall foliage season.  Many insisted that we stay at least two nights (even mid-week) which didn't work for us since we planned to drive each day and keep following the changing leaves.  Fortunately, a few inns were able to squeeze us in for only one night. 

Generally we stay at large Bed and Breakfasts or small inns, preferably with a restaurant which serves dinner.  That way, we can drive during the day, check into the hotel/inn, and not have to get back in our car and go searching for a dinner spot.  I also wanted us to stay in ocean side accommodations since I’d heard so much about the scenic coastline of Maine. 

We planned to meet our two daughters and spend Friday and Saturday nights in Vermont, tucked away in a mountain lodge, but the search for the perfect place proved more difficult than expected - one daughter is a vegetarian; the other daughter has a small Yorkshire terrier, so finding a combination of a neat lodge which accepted doggies and served a good selection of veggie meals was a real challenge.  You’ll see that we DID find the perfect place and it was one of the most enjoyable destinations of our trip. 

I brought our laptop along, and used a plug-in converter to keep it powered in our car and write about our trip as Kenny drove along.  This proved to be a good idea since I could include lots of little observations along the way that I’d probably forget to add once we were home.  Wish I’d done this on our foliage trip last year through the Blue Ridge Mountains and Parkway. 

We allowed three hours of driving each day to give us plenty of time to stop a few places along the way.  We spent the night in Bar Harbor, Boothbay Harbor, York Beach, the Green Mountains of Vermont, and Boston.