Bradbury Mountain State Park, ME

In April of 2009, myself and Pat, who is a seasoned veteran of Hunter's Hikes, and Dan, making his first appearance here, spent a "guy's weekend" in Freeport, Maine mere weeks before the birth of Dan's first child, a boy.  We headed up on a Friday afternoon, making sure to drink copious amounts of coffee, eat even more fast food than coffee, and hit both Kittery Trading Post and L.L. Bean's flagship store, which just happened to be pissing distance from our hotel in Freeport.  Our first night in Maine consisted of a huge steak dinner, several locally-brewed beers, and some late night shopping at L.L. Bean.  Dan was kind of enough to reward Pat and I for putting up with him by gifting us with quite generous gift cards, so Pat and I were like kids in a candy store.  We awoke bright and early Saturday morning and were welcomed with cool temperatures and a thick blanket of fog.  We went easy at the hotel's breakfast buffet and then hopped in Pat's Jeep for the quick drive over to the state park.  Bradbury Mountain State Park has quite a few miles of hiking trails and is situated around, obviously, Bradbury Mountain.  The three of us hiked directly to the peak, where the fog was obstructing our views of Casco Bay.   Hoping the sun would eventually emerge and eviscerate the pea soup that surrounded us, we opted for one of the longer trails in the park, that skirted down the western slope of the Mountain, and then wrapped itself around the base for several miles, eventually returning us to the top.  We took our time on this trail, finding ourselves acting like immature 13-year-old boys, throwing our knives into dead trees and snowballs at one another, not the immature almost-30-year-olds we really are.  Once back at the summit a few hours later, we finally had the view we had hoped for.  We could finally see Casco Bay looming off in the distance, many miles to our east.  We sat around, whittled some spears we used to stab each other in the calf with, and then hiked back down to the car, ravenously hungry and in search of food.  We grabbed some pizza at a local Freeport pizzeria, and then headed back to the hotel to shower up and get ready for more L.L. Bean patronage and dinner.  We poked around town, which was eerily quiet with it being April (off-season), making sure to hit every expensive brand-name store we could find.  Unfortunately for me, due to rather sad circumstances, my trip was cut short, and I had to make the long drive back to Massachusetts before dinner, but Pat and Dan stuck around in Freeport for another night and made sure to spend as much time in L.L. Bean as security would allow.  All in all it was a great trip and a great way to celebrate Dan's impending fatherhood.  I think the biggest thing that made us smile that weekend was knowing that in ten years, the three of us would return, but with our kids in tow.