Boating in Eggemoggin Reach and Bucks Harbor (Tuesday August 25th, 2015)

It’s foggy again this morning, which Steve and I are really enjoying. Fog in Colorado means that it is extremely cold, and here in Maine, it’s foggy and very warm (in the 70’s). Steve and I took a swim in Tony and Sarah’s pool this morning, it was brisk, but so refreshing, overlooking Eggemoggin Reach (the body of water between deer Isle and the main land. Sarah had a wonderful breakfast of eggs, toasted corn muffins and bacon ready for us when we came out of the pool.

While Sarah and I were cleaning up breakfast, Steve and Tony made a run to the local bread artisan and came back with some delicious danishes and breads.

Although it was foggy, Tony and Sarah really wanted to take us out on their boat, which we were extremely excited to experience, to get a different perspective on coastal Maine.  So we headed northwest through Eggemoggin reach to bucks harbor. Steve and Tony headed out first, to the dingy to retrieve their boat. 

Tony rowing out

 When Sarah and I reached the dock (the same one that Steve and I walked to yesterday morning), Steve was waiting for us on the pier.

Steve and Sarah on the Pier while Tony fetched the boat

Soon Tony appeared with the boat; we all got in and headed northwest through the fog. Apparently the fog is somewhat unusual this time of year, but so beautiful. We used our fog horn, radar and other instruments as we passed through the reach and under the bridge to Deer Isle. 

Driving through very thick fog

We were driving up the reach under full instruments. We could see everything on the screen in front of Tony. Depth, shoreline, all the navigation buoys, and all the other boats, etc. Then when we got within ~100 feet of another boat, Tony would blow his horn to make the other boat aware of our vicinity. Very exciting. We went several miles in the fog like this then drove out the other side of it. 

The bridge to Little Deer Isle

We soon came out at Bucks Harbor, where Tony and Sarah are members of a very traditional, community yachting club. It was started by three Bostonians who summered there. There was a picture in the building of the men sitting on the porch, on rocking chairs, with a caption that read. “Time to relax, the work’s been done.” This picture was taken in 1912 when the yachting club was first completed. 

The dock leading up to the yachting club.  A very nice young man came running out to help us tie up

Inside the yachting club

Tony and Sarah are life long members of this yachting club, where their kids grew up and learned to sail. They still hold square dances in the building, and only in the last 2 years have allowed alcohol. Steve and I sat down on the front porch rocking chairs for a few minutes, looking out over the harbor, and could have easily stayed there all day.

As we pulled back out of the harbor, we went over to their small sailboat that they moor in Bucks Harbor, a took a few minutes to straighten out some ropes that were rubbing. It was fun to jump from the power boat to the sailboat and back after fixing it. 

Then they said, “now let’s go see some seals”, and they took us out to two small rock islands a little further west. As we approached the first one we saw a single harbor seal, but as we approached the second island, it was covered with adult and baby seals, they were absolutely mezmorizing to Steve and I. Tony cut the engine, and we relaxed and enjoyed a wonderful lunch as we sat and watched the seals, as they also watched us. 

Just look at these cute faces

When we left the seal rocks, we headed back east through the foggy reach to their little harbor.

As I am typing today’s blog, a lobster boat is coming in from their day’s work in the lobster fields. They run right up into the harbor by Tony and Sarah’s house. So fun to see!

In the afternoon, Sarah took us for a drive over to Little Deer Isle and Deer Isle. There is a beautiful bridge from the mainland to little Deer Isle, and a causeway from Little Deer Isle to Deer Isle. These are two incredibly beautiful islands, which before the 1930’s could only be reached by ferry. The ferry business was passed down from generation to generation until the bridge went in. The largest town on these islands is called Stonington, and has a beautiful downtown area with a commercial lobster pier, as well a huge art community and many shops.

One of the large piers.  These were used in the late 1800's for steam ships and ferrys

A lobster cage love seat

Stonington Commercial Pier

The Stonington Opera House, a historic landmark

When we got back to the house, Sarah put out appetizers of blueberry cheese and peekytoe (rock) crab salad. It was all incredibly flavorful, and so fun.  Tony and Sarah have truly gone out of their way to make our stay unforgettable, and they have far surpassed what we could have ever imagined.  We sincerely hope to be able to return this favor to them someday!

Coastal Main (Monday, August 24th, 2015)

When we woke up this morning, we took a relaxing walk through Tony and Sarah's neighborhood, and ended up at the boat ramp for their harbor.  It was such a peaceful place with the fog hiding the far shoreline.

A view from the ramp

A lobster boat mooring in the harbor

The dingys used to access the larger boats in the harbor

When we returned from our walk, Sarah had cornbread muffins waiting for us for breakfast, and had packed us a lunch to take with us on our day's adventures.  

We headed out with Tony at about 9:00 to do some sightseeing. There are so many interesting places around this beautiful area that Tony and Sarah call home.  In the small town of Brooklin, Maine, he took us by the house of E. B. White, who wrote "Charlottes Web".  It is a beautiful white house hidden by mature trees.

The house that E.B. White lived in when he wrote "Charolette's Web"

As you are looking through the next few pictures, close your eyes and imagine the movie.  These pictures are exactly what we remember in the movie from when we watched it with our daughters as they were growing up.

The barn where Charlotte's Web took place

The fairgrounds that Charlotte and Wilbur moved to together

In addition to E B White's house, there are also 8 boat builders in Brooklin. One off these, called Brooklin Boat Yard and is run by Steve White, EB White's grandson.  

Noel Paul Stookey of Peter Paul and Mary also settled in this area.  He now records in an old converted chicken coop on his property.  

Tony and Sarah are so knowledgable about this area, and have stories that go back many generations.

We stopped at the LL Bean outlet in the small town of Ellsworth, Maine where Route1 and 1A come together, and from there headed toward the Schoodic Peninsula and to a wonderful place called Little Moose Island.  We parked our car and headed out for the island.  This island can be reached by land during low tide, but is cut off during high tide, so it is important to plan your hike around the tides so as not to be stranded.  When you live in Colorado, you don't plan any part of our day around the tides, but we are finding that here in Maine, tides are very important to pay attention to.  

You can reach the island by land at low tide

Steve and Tony crossing over to Little Moose Island

Gorgeous hike on Little Moose Island

Sarah had packed a wonderful lunch for us, so we were fortunate enough to enjoy our lunch on the cliffs of Little Moose Island, watching the waves break on the rugged shore below us. 

Below is a short video of Tony telling us about Little Moose Island

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FlneWaHaPE

As we were leaving the island, we saw these beautiful wisps of fog on the mainland.

And these fun tide pools

And these hairy rocks.  They just needed eyes and a smile and they would be complete!

After our hike we stopped at the Schoodic Research Center which is a huge education facility on the peninsula, complete with dining and lodging.

On the way back we stopped at a place called Tidal Falls. It is a narrow inlet with rocks, that looks like a river that flows both ways as the tides come in and out. This was a very unique experience.   

We are so lucky to have our friends to show us these amazing sights.  We would never be able to find them on our own.  Then before heading back to the house, our last stop was at Jordan's for a quick ice cream in Ellsworth, Maine.  

They have every flavor you could ever want in hard or soft serve

Then we all met back up for dinner at a great restaurant called the BarnCastle.  It is a large old farmhouse that has been converted to a restaurant.  They had a great selection, so we all had some mussels and nachos for starters and then finished up with pizza and salads.

BarnCastle Restaurant

What an amazing day we had exploring the area and hearing the stories to support the sights we were seeing.  We ended the day back at Sarah and Tony's wonderful home where we continued to share stories about our lives.  A day that we will remember for a lifetime...especially as it is now captured here! 

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!  

Boston and Portland (Saturday, August 22nd, 2015)

We dropped our oldest daughter off at the airport this morning, so she could go see her husband for the weekend, and we will move our youngest daughter back up to school tomorrow.  It's always a bit of a struggle for us when our kids head back to school, and our house once again becomes very quiet, so we got on-line to see if we could find any cheap flights.  Not knowing where else to start, we started looking in Portland, Oregon.  We have never been to the northwest coast, so thought it might be fun.  Steve was able to find cheap flights, but rental cars were really high.  Finally, he called me over to look at this car rental he had found.  It was a great rate, but I quickly realized that it was in Portland, Maine, not Portland, Oregon!  So I suggested that maybe we wanted to go see the north east coast instead.  He laughed, and then said, "Why not!  Let's see what we can find for flights".  So he started looking at flights, and behold, there were cheap flights into Boston.  Score!

When we realized that we might be heading to the north east coast, we instantly thought of a couple of families that we know in that area, so we contacted both of them on very short notice to see if they might be available for dinner during the next week or so.  Both of them were available, and seemed excited that we were coming their way.  As we talked more with our friends, it became clear that we would need to head north out of Boston first, and up into Maine, so that we could see our friends in Maine first, then we could take our time getting back to the Boston area to see our other friends.

Our Maine friends, Tony and Sarah gave us a really nice list of things to stop and see on our way up toward them, so we started planning our route, and decided that we would spend our first night in Portland, Maine.  It is a good distance from Logan Airport, and will get us heading in the right direction, but as we started looking at hotels, we realized that even though everything else is cheap, hotels are not.  We decided to stay at the Holiday Inn by the Bay, since we usually get some perks at Holiday Inn because we stay with them so often, but it was going to be $400/night.  Yikes.  That's a lot for a Holiday Inn!  So Steve decided to log into his IHG account to see if he had any points that he could use to help out with the cost a little bit.  And to our surprise, we just reached our one year anniversary with them, and were being rewarded with a free night.  Could this be working out any better?  So we booked our hotel using our free night stay.  Let's hope that the rest of our trip goes this well!!!

We landed in Boston, Massachusetts at 4:50 ET, and found the bus for the rental car lots.  We had booked the car through the Budget Fast Break club (which is free to join), so we were able to skip the line at the budget counter and go straight out to the lot.  In the lot kiosk, there was no line at all, and we quickly got our car and headed out for Portland, Maine.  We were dying to see the ocean, so we took the long way to Portland, via highway 1A, which runs along the coast through the small towns of Hampton and Rye.  This was a more scenic route, but when we got into the town of Hampton, there was a seawall for quite a ways which blocked our view, but soon it was gone, and we enjoyed the view of the ocean as we drove along. 

The beautiful beach in Hampton, New Hampshire

 As we drove down the highway, we periodically saw signs that read "Watch for moose on roadway".  We got a kick out of this, but you see these types of signs everywhere, it's just the animals that change.  In Colorado, it's elk, in Arizona is burros, and in Maine is moose!   When we finally reached Portland, Steve was the first to get out of the car, and as he opened his door the smell of fish hit us like a freight train.  Wow, we're definitely not used to that.

It was dark when we got to our hotel, and apparently, we were the last ones to check in because the only room they had left for us was a smoking room.  In Colorado they don't even have smoking rooms as an option, so we really didn't expect this.  She asked us to go up and check the room out, and we had to admit that it was really bad.
We aren't used to cigarette smoke at all, so we asked them if there was anything they could do to freshen up the room, so they gave us two drink coupons to use while we waited for it to be freshened up.   We each enjoyed a complimentary drink and then they called us to go check it out again.  It was much better so we took it. The room had a great view, and was a great room except for the smoking issue.  

Around 9:00 we  took the hotel shuttle to J's Oyster for dinner.  It came highly rated on Trip Advisor and by the hotel staff, so we gave it a try.  It was an interesting place.  It was a small seafood shack right on the bay with both indoor and outdoor seating.  

J's Oyster with outdoor seating to the right and the restaurant to the left

 We chose to sit inside since it was cooling off for the night, and as we entered, it was a definite bar atmosphere. 

Some of the food was very good, and some was very average, which we found very interesting.  All of the entrees came with bread and a salad.  The bread consisted of a basket of soft white rolls and the salads had been pre-plated and stacked, with a prepackaged envelope of dressing on the side. Water was served in little plastic cups, and yet our beers were served in beer glasses from each of the respective brewery's, and the entrees were fantastic. Steve had boulibaise I had seafood casserole. Both were very good, with nice quantities.  Mine wasn't very healthy, as it was in a butter and white wine sauce, but Steve's was very healthy in a light tomato and wine sauce.  

We had a few leftovers, which we were excited to finish at another time. We chose to walk home, instead of taking the shuttle back, and on the way walked by a love lock fence.

We also stopped at an outdoor venue with a live band. It was very fun and the band was great. We got back to the room very late and enjoyed a great night's sleep!