Family is visiting. Friends are in town. The calendar is marked with festivals, fairs, dinners and coffee dates.

These last busy days of summer in Maine, a woman sometimes needs to get away. A hundred miles away.

This is not about planes, trains, yachts or cruise ships. This is about hitting the road with a full tank of gas, the windows down and tunes playing on the car stereo. It’s Thelma and Louise, except Louise isn’t invited.

On a recent sunny day cluttered with too many obligations, I set out with a promise to myself: Put 100 miles between you and the noise. The “100” part was random. The distance was intentional. I didn’t take maps. I didn’t have a plan. Just drive 100 miles, I told myself. Follow your instinct, your curiosity, and be free today. The world will go on without you to cook, clean up and cajole.

I started midmorning and before noon was in Ellsworth waiting impatiently in the long line of cars taking the momentous left turn onto U.S. Route 1, where the highway opens up. Even if it doesn’t actually widen, the sky gets bigger, the houses fewer. The backdrop is Acadia National Park like a cyclorama spinning in the distance. As the wind whipped through my hair, I thought of all the people crowding Mount Desert Island’s mountains, trails and lakes – the ones I enjoy at less populous times of the year. “Suckers!” I found myself whispering.

The real moment of bliss, however, occurred at the Hancock-Washington County line in Steuben. Exhilarating, that crossing and the release of a life left behind.

With all that freedom wafting through the front seat, I had worked up an appetite. I was hungry. First stop: The Country Charm. Here, let me offer a small vocabulary lesson. This is not charm as in quaint, as in Camden. This is a sturdier charm as in fried fish with tartar sauce and coleslaw. This kind of charm says: “Hello, deah, take a seat anywhere.”

The sign to turn right off Route 1 onto Pigeon Hill Road for a winding 11/2-mile trek is unnecessary. People know Country Charm. Locals and summer visitors alike fill the little prefab structure and its several additions. They come hungry. They leave full. Joanne Potter, owner and cook, likes it that way.

Seafood is the house specialty, but Potter also offers traditional diner food: grilled cheese sandwiches, hot dogs, chicken fingers, steaks, onion rings, French fries, coleslaw, mashed potatoes, gravy, BLTs and pizza. Seven days a week, she starts serving breakfast at 5 a.m. and keeps cooking until 8 p.m. On Mondays, she stops at 2 p.m.

Potter works alone in the kitchen with one, sometimes two waitresses on the floor. On a recent Friday – the busiest night of the week – Potter fed 110 people in three hours. Charm? This woman has it in spades, if not spuds.

Slightly less charming is the buzzer that goes off when a patron enters the establishment. But it alerts the waitress to the presence of a customer. I arrived – “Bzzzzzzzzz!” – just before noon, and the place was empty. I took a table next to a window with a view to the parking lot. While I was deciding between the fried clams and a crabmeat roll, two construction workers sat down in another dining room. They were discussing their job – “So we put the septic tank in afterwards?” one was asking – when a large family of six from Gardiner sat down next to me. They ordered double hamburgers and fish sandwiches, coleslaw all around. The workers ordered big meals, too, plus beer.

I ordered the clams with fries. Freedom is freedom.

Potter prepares her tasty fried clams with a thick batter that you can crunch into or peel away if you reach a maximum carbohydrate count, which I did quickly. The coleslaw was a refreshing palate cleanser, and I spent the rest of my lunch sipping ice tea and listening to the family talk about the new bridge being built between Bucksport and Prospect. Could I have been happier?

If you ask Potter, a woman of few words, how she wants her diners to feel when they leave, she’s likely to give the same concise answer she gave me: “Satisfied.”

But I was rounding the bend of Milbridge before I realized I hadn’t had dessert. If I hadn’t already been thinking about ice cream, I might not have noticed the In Town Cafe sign on the side of the road advertising soft-serve, a favorite from childhood. And I might not have noticed the In Town Cafe because it looks like a car wash. Even so, I ended up turning around and ordering a kiddie cone of chocolate soft-serve. It was the perfect cap to lunch, and I felt like a teenager as I pulled away, licking the sides of my melting treat.

By Columbia Falls, I was ready for another digression. After 20 years of bypassing the place, I decided to give the little hamlet a shot. By swinging off the main route, I came upon a pastoral blueberry field, at the end of which was a small cemetery. I stopped, turned off the car, and wandered about reading headstones. Wass, Pineo, Tibbetts, Farnsworth, Foss, Bucknam. Had these families been overwhelmed by summer visitors 100 years ago? I stared out at the barrens and considered the possibility.

The trip-o-meter was nearing 100 when I reached the cutoff for Roque Bluffs State Park. It was time to reach my goal. I veered right and jaunted past sun-and-salt worn houses, beaten down trailers, suburban-style ranches.

Soon, a crescent sand beach came into view. I gasped just as the mileage went from 99 to 100, pulled into a parking lot and turned off the car. Stepping outside, I took a deep breath filled with the perfume of wild white roses and sea air. This was the gift at the end of my 100 miles.

Crossing a small weathered lane, I walked onto the beach. A few daring swimmers stood thigh-high in the icy water. A middle-aged couple played with a dog. A family was having a picnic. A lone woman was flying a kite. I sat quietly in their company, wondering what they, too, had left behind for this moment.

Alicia Anstead can be reached at 990-8266 and aanstead@bangordailynews.net.