Boothbay Harbor, and Coastal Maine (Sunday, August 23rd, 2015)

We woke up to rain this morning, but that won't slow us down, so we got in the car and headed north to Boothbay, Maine! This is a very popular tourist town, so we were really lucky it was rainy as it wasn't very crowded.  We found a parking place with no problem and took our time walking around town. 

The Boothbay Town Center, near the harbor.

Boothbay Harbor

Another view of the harbor

Over the harbor, there is a very cool walking bridge, with a very interesting house in the middle of it.  The only access to the little house is the walking bridge, as the house is literally right in the middle of the harbor.  The little house was built in 1902, and is 1,076 sq. ft.   It appears that it has changed hands many times, and served many different purposes in it's lifetime.  The last tenants used it as a house.  I am giving so much detail about this little house because it is currently for sale.  For the low price of only $695,000, you could be the proud owner of a house in the middle of a harbor.

The little house in the middle of the walking bridge.

Sorry about the glare, but here is the inside of the beautiful little house in the harbor.

When we finished looking around town, we started thinking about lunch.  We had done some research before we left home, and found a restaurant called Shannon's Unshelled.  It is a very small seaside building (probably 10ft by 12ft total).  

See the tiny building to right of Steve, that's Shannon's Unshelled

The owner (Shannon) is a very nice woman who has run this take-out restaurant for the last 2 years.  Since it was raining, she was considering closing for the day, but once we ordered our lunch others began to show up as well, and I think her day turned out better than expected.  The only thing on the menu at Shannon's Unshelled are lobster rolls!  They are just lobster on a toasted roll with melted butter on the side. So good! No mayo or fillers, just lobster.  We really enjoyed our lobster rolls at her outside tables by the bay. 

This is about as good as it gets!

As we headed back to the car, we saw a Canadian bowling alley, which was really interesting.  Our youngest daughter's boyfriend has told us about them, but we have never seen one, so this was a treat.  They use fewer pins and smaller balls that you just palm instead of having finger holes drilled.  

A Canadian bowling alley in Boothbay, Maine

Everything grows everywhere up here.  I think I could even be a successful gardner in Maine

Once we were in the car we headed north again. We drove through so many beautiful small towns along the way, and finally ended up at Sarah and Tony's house. It is off by itself, right on the ocean with the most beautiful views. Their current house was built in the 1970's, but before that the family had a cottage right up the road from their current house that was built in 1889.  There is so much family history in their little community.  Such a rarity in today's busy no roots world.  We sat on their back porch and enjoyed catching up over snacks and one of the most beautiful views we have ever seen.  

It doesn't get any better than this.  Enjoying the evening with wonderful friends!

And the view's not bad either!

Tony and Sarah had planned an authentic lobster dinner for us for our first night, so this meant going down to the ocean to fetch water to cook our lobsters in.  Apparently everyone in Maine knows that you always cook lobsters in ocean water.  It is salted perfectly!  Those of us from Colorado certainly were not aware of this, probably because it is very difficult to fetch ocean water in Colorado!  We also learned that tides change about every 6.5 hours.  We love learning new things!  

It is very hard to walk along the shore at low tide because the rocks are so slick, and it is a long walk to reach the water, so at high tide we fetched our water and took it back to the kitchen.  I've never planned my dinner around high tide before so this was really fun! 

Fetching our water for dinner

We had the most amazing lobster dinner with bread and salad and homemade blueberry pie.  

Fresh off the boat!  

Then we went down stairs to look at a slideshow from a previous over seas trip they had taken. What an amazing  day and evening!