When last we left our plucky heroine, she was leaving for vacation a mere 12 hours behind schedule just as the tail end of a tropical storm was moving up the coast in the same direction that she was headed, also known as Vacation 2021.

The next nine hours were spent in the passenger seat as the wonderful husband white-knuckled his way up I-84 and the Mass Pike, both of us tense about the state of the boat trailer and the storm we were driving through.

We finally pulled into our hotel at 2:30 a.m., at which time I was informed by the night clerk that even though I had called ahead to say we would be late, they had given our room away, and the only room they had left was one with one king-size bed. The last time all five of us fit in a king-size bed was about 12 years ago. I could immediately feel my family turning Lord of the Flies and trying to figure out who the weakest links were.

They might have given the desk clerk the impression that his stool was at least as good as the floor because he quickly started trying to scrounge up a cot for us and assured us that the chaise lounge in the room was also very comfortable. “Oh really,” drawled A, squinting down at the clerk from his lofty 6 foot 3.

When we finally got to our room, Duncan decided, for the first time in his life, that the middle of the bed was where he was going to park himself. The WH lost another hour of sleep throwing him off the bed, only to have him sneak back up five minutes later. Finally, the exhaustion took over and we turned the air conditioning to Arctic and resigned ourselves to sharing a bed with the giant furball.

The next day was our one day at the ocean. So, obviously, it rained all day.

Rain feels like an understatement. It was sheets and buckets and walls of water.

We decided to do a driving tour of the southern Maine Coast, which was exactly what everyone wanted to do after the previous evening’s tumultuous nine hours in the car. At least we left the boat and trailer at the hotel.

We pulled up to the first famous lighthouse and I yelled, “Time for a picture, everyone out!”

I was met with three glares, and I think the dog may have even muttered something under his breath in the back seat. At least my insistence on visiting some of my favorite places was bringing my children closer together, even if it united them against me. Those pictures look about as good as you would expect three kids standing on a 50-foot-high pile of rocks in the middle of hurricane winds and a torrential downpour to look. So did the pictures from the next four light houses we stopped at.

Someday, they’re going to look back and laugh at these memories. Today is not that day. I don’t think that day will be any time in the next 10 to 15 years, either.

Next on my to-do list was getting a $5 lobster roll from a small shack in the middle of a little fishing village. I had fond memories of getting them after a day at the beach, the cool lobster salad, and the crisp New England Style hot dog bun. I never cared much for plain lobster, but there was something about a lobster roll that I just loved. I thought it would be the perfect introduction to lobster for my kids, who’d never had it before.

We finally found the place and I was delighted to see it appeared unchanged. I ordered up lobster rolls for three of us and a cheeseburger for one of the less adventurous members of the party. And, then I just about fell over when the bill was about six times what I expected it to be. I didn’t realize lobster rolls are now going at market price.

My piece of nostalgia did not taste nearly as good as I remembered, but that might have been because of the four other sets of eyes boring through me as they ate two days of our food budget in a single serving, all while sitting in soaking wet clothes, shivering. I did not make any lobster converts that day.

At that point, I made the executive decision to not make any more executive decisions. Again, my family united in their joy. It was obvious to me that my plans for my ideal vacation were a pipe dream for me, and a nightmare for the rest of them. I pulled into the next ice cream shop I saw to bribe them a little and to let them all come up with a new game plan. The shop offered pints of ice cream for the same price as a single dip cone, which fit in our newly slim budget. We decided to buy two flavors and spent the next 15 minutes passing the pints around, sharing with each other and Googling things we could do that didn’t involve perching on slippery rocks over the ocean in rainstorms.

We ended up taking the scenic route back to the hotel, passing through quaint New England towns, stopping at a small inlet while the rain let up to let the dog and the kids run on the beach for a few minutes, checking out a few random shops, and getting back to the hotel in time to go for a swim, get some cheap pizza, pile onto the king size, and hunker over one of the kid’s iPads to watch the latest Marvel movie, “Black Widow.”

And, lo and behold, everyone enjoyed themselves immensely.

One of the cute little cottages I remember from my earlier trips to Maine was called “Multum in Parvo” or “a lot in a little.”

Even though I didn’t find that cottage again on our trip this time, I thought of it, and it turns out that it was a good motto for the rest of our trip. I gave up on the grand plans and the recreations of all my favorite things, and just did the simplest activities that were close at hand. From that point on, our trip improved greatly.

We packed a lot more into the next eight days, but it’s going to take one more chapter to finish up Vacation 2021.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.