Palin seemed at ease at most events, lingering outside her bus or SUV to answer every possible question despite Piper’s best efforts to drag her away and helpless shouts of “Last question!” from her aides.

During a stop at a café in central Pennsylvania, even her normally reticent husband Todd opened up to reporters about his family’s readiness for a potential campaign.

At a clambake in the coastal New Hampshire town of Seabrook on Wednesday, Palin cheerfully chatted at length with a pack of reporters from national outlets like CNN, NBC, CBS, The Washington Post, Time and Bloomberg…

And by the time her final event of the week concluded on Thursday morning — a breakfast with New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte in Portsmouth — she had given reporters so much access that they ditched Palin and flocked to Ayotte instead, hungry for a fresh angle.