Rest Stops on Our Trip to Maine – A Retrospective

On our trip to Maine, I was amazed to see how incredibly different the rest stops in the six differing states were.

New Jersey rest stops amaze me. They incorporate food, rest rooms, tourist information, and sometimes stores. For the most part, they are clean and modern. I actually enjoy stopping at the rest stops (insert McGreevey joke here) when the need is there.

Next… we stopped at a New York rest stop. We have stopped at a few of them in the past few weeks. New York has a similar philosophy as New Jersey. It combines all the necessary food, store and restroom facilities.

Now… we move on to Connecticut, which drove me incredibly nuts. We stopped at two in a row, out of necessity, and neither had an operational toilet. Vending machines that barely took our crumpled dollars were the food and if you were lucky, there was a brochure on camp grounds. Yeah… dirty and unpleasant.

Massachusetts was abysmal as well. We stopped at one and the lack of food and clean facilities made the stop about as appealing as having to rake my own eyeballs out with a plunger.

Rhode Island was cool. The rest stop was humungous and clean. It had two really nice employees who gave out information to anyone who asked nicely. There weren’t any food facilities, but hey… beggars can’t be choosers when the place was gorgeous.

Maine took the cake. Stuck in the middle of a coniferous forest, the rest stop is large, has friendly tourist personnel, and even has signs all around the parking lot teaching entrants how to stretch their legs. It was extremely user friendly.

On an 8 hour trip, we peed a couple times and bought some refreshments. We let Tucker pee and poop as well when he needed and we listened to music on the iPod.

It was a great trip.