Laundry and dinner

The Shiretown Motor Inn is a typical motel type accommodation. This is the first, and I think only, motel we are staying in this holiday. I love the fact that you can drive right up to the room door and carry your luggage in. Though for Drew this type of accommodation always makes him think of the film Joy Ride where the trucker is chasing the three kids around the Intestate and into their motel. So we had constant references to Candy Cane from the time we arrived :-)
We picked the hotel on the basis that it was three miles from the Canadian border and that we would be fresh if there were any waits or delays in the border crossing. It is 1/4 of a mile from the I95.

Town Bell in Houlton

As mentioned yesterday, today was laundry day. Travelling in a car means we need to limit our luggage to one large and one smaller case plus two small pieces of, what airlines call, hand luggage. This certainly doesn't allow for enough clothes for three weeks, so we build clothes washing in to the trip. You might think the fifth day of the holiday is early for this, but with the humidity and heat in New York we were each changing at least twice a day, meaning we were at our limit of nine days of clothes - so we headed to the Military Street Laundromat in Houlton. Just like buses in New York, the various launderettes we have been to in America capture the local culture. Tonight we had a young dad in his 20's washing for himself, his wife and baby child. An elderly lady giving her son (or grandson) in his late teens an induction into the ways of laundry and a lady in her 40s with a large family, at least she had enough clothes in her wash for four or five people. They and the lady who ran the place were all friendly and happy to give tips to us strangers.

One of the packing rules we have on this type of holiday is that all the clothes we pack have been washed often enough before not to run, so we can use as many machines as we need for all the clothes without worrying about which goes in which machine. Military Street Laundromat had some exceptionally big machines - three load size as they were called. So for $5 (20 times 25c) and 75cents for a box of Tide washing powder (a brand that has disappeared in the UK) all our clothes were done in one go. The more traditional machines were $2.50 and we would have needed three and three powders - so the new machines were a good saving for us. The power of the washer was amazingly vigorous and its cycle was complete in 24 minutes. Then on to the dryers, we did 12 minutes first, took out the dry clothes and then another 6 minutes - this was 25c per 3 minutes. So within 45 minutes we were all done and ready to go.
Nice though Houlton was it did not have any downtown restaurants of note, as we drove back to the hotel, we saw McD, Burger King and KFC, but nothing we fancied. Driving about 1/4 mile beyond the hotel we came to something that called itself The Horn of Plenty, we assumed it was a chain, but it turned out to be a family run restaurant with the husband as the chef and his wife as an amazing hostess. She, Nancy, turned up and listed the 7 items that were on as specials tonight, and the things on the menu that weren't available. The restaurant space only hosted 40 people, but all but two of the places were taken when we arrived.
Drew opted for Bleu sage butter and mushroom pasta. As the name implies this was strong flavoured mushrooms with a sage butter and a soft bleu cheese over conchiglie. I opted for the Cajun jumbo shrimp (jumbo prawn in UK English) over linguini marinara - the three huge shrimps were nicely blackened with the Cajun spices, butterflied and served with only the tail shell still on. The marinara had a deep tomato flavour rich in the background or oregano, basil and garlic.
The pasta dishes were served with an option of soup or salad in the price, and we both started with the soup - a Beef and Vegetable soup packed full of celery, onion, carrots, and swede all chopped into small cubes, there were also small chunks of tender beef in the soup. A full bowl of this would be a meal in itself.
We were extremely satisfied with our meal and found it a nice touch for the chef (Bill) to come out and greet his guests before the end of the evening. So after such a nice meal it was back to the hotel and to bed by 10.