My Life as a Maine Innkeeper: July 2011

Monday, July 25, 2011

All the Great People...

July is almost over and I have been so busy with guests I haven't kept up on my blog. I have met so many great people in the past couple months and got to say hello again to some old friends. There was the lovely couple who spent their 40th anniversary with us last year and came back this year for their 41st celebration. And the great couple from New Jersey here hunting for treasures at the many antique shops and flea markets throughout the midcoast. Of the newlywed couple who spent the last night of their honeymoon with us before heading home. With the unusually hot and steamy weather, many guests were wilting and wondering if Maine is always that hot but our Atlanta guest just kept moving and said it felt like home. As for me, the hot weather did me in but I still had energy to greet all the wonderful people who come through the doors and make them feel welcome at my B&B.

Our Journey to Bath

Before Amy and Mark ever even thought about making me a part of their family, they were thinking about being innkeepers. About a year and a half after they adopted me, they left me in Erie, PA and took a trip to explore possible towns in New England to open their new business. While I patiently waited at home with a dog sitter, they journeyed to Bath ME, their first stop on the trip. It was December of 2004 so it was cold and raining in Maine but they fell in love with the town and the people they met. Driving to the next town in New Hampshire in a snow storm, they knew in their hearts that Bath was going to be our new home. They went ahead and looked at the other places as planned, but Bath was it. In February of 2005, they left me once again to look at a house on the market in Bath. It had been a B&B but had gone to a private home for the past couple years. Well, lucky us, they loved the house and put in a bid. It was so exciting when the realtor called us in Erie to say the Benjamin F. Packard House was ours! Things started moving quickly then. Packing up the house in Erie, making long distance arrangements for licenses, sprinkler systems and all the things that go with opening a new business. On May 14th, they packed the car and this time took me along too. We closed on the house on May 16th and in six hectic weeks, opened the new Benjamin F. Packard House B&B! My life as a bed and breakfast dog had begun.