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the Maine coast

After departing Freeport, we headed up the Maine coast toward Acadia National Park, making many stops along the way. We stopped in Boothbay Harbor and then again in Camden.

I don't quite recall why we stopped in Boothbay Harbor. It was quite touristy. I think it was to find this fisherman, listed in Kate's book of things to see across the US.
Apparently if you look at him from the side in the rain, something strange happens. I think there's lots of pirate lore associated with Boothbay, because the gift shop we went in was filled with not only the ordinary tourist trinkets, but myriad pirate trinkets as well.
We walked around this cove and then hopped back in the car to head north.

Our next stop, around dinnertime, was Camden. We were also thinking to camp there for the night, but that didn't work out. Camden was beautiful, the kind of small town you would want to live in and know everyone there. We stopped in a park near the town library where there was a statue dedicated to Edna St. Vincent Millay. This park was one of the most picturesque things I saw.
We needed groceries so we stopped at a store and in addition to the camping necessities, picked up some fresh fish for dinner. There's a state park just north of the town, so we figured we could stop there and have a picnic on the beach. The park straddled the coast road and much to our chagrin, we discovered that the coast side closed earlier than the inland side, about 30 minutes before we arrived. We were at a loss. We decided to keep driving in hopes of finding a public beach or something to that effect.

A few miles further north, we did, in fact, find a small strip of public beach, where we decided to cook our fish and enjoy the evening. We bounded over a low rock wall onto the sand and plopped ourselves down, all cooking and food supplies in hand, near a family consisting of what appeared to be mom, grandparents, and 4 small children. It sounded like they were speaking a mixture of English and French.

As we set up the stove and began to cook our dinner, the family kept giving us strange, disapproving sidelong glances. They also kept moving farther and farther away from us and I could hear them warning the kids to stay away from us, as if we were monsters who might eat them alive. Kate and I found the entire situation hilarious. I still don't think that cooking dinner on the beach is all that strange of an activity. And we certainly don't look like threatening people. I mean, we had even showered that morning.

We finished our leisurely picnic on the beach and packed up to head north to Acadia, much to the relief of the sidelong-glancing family.

Labels: travel

posted by CP @ 6:05 AM 1 thoughts