Maine Vacation - Day 2
October 6, 2015
Our trip to Maine was amazing, beautiful, and altogether too short. Unfortunately I’ve let my professional life take over all of my time in the intervening months such that my experiences in that wonderful state have remained in my memory. I’d like to change that now by releasing what I can, in a format that I can maintain. I won’t pretend to capture everything with eloquence, but I’ll try to convey the gist of things before they slip away. Here goes.
Watching a slideshow of all the sights of my mother in law’s Italy trip warmed us both up to what we were about to see. Our flight was early, so we went to bed with all sorts of grandiose visions in our heads. We awoke groggy and stumbled our way to Norfolk International. A short flight later saw us in Philly, where the sun rays were cutting across the airport walkways in a captivating way.
The flight over to Maine plopped us in Bangor, where we soon discovered that we’d forgotten to make a car rental reservation. After sweating bullets for a couple of minutes, we calmed down to the realization that there’s not too much rental traffic going on in the area. We grabbed a Kia Sportage with little fanfare and hit the road. The landscape immediately opened up to us, but our stomachs were the deciding factor in our first stop: The Lucerne Inn. We couldn’t have picked a better stop, and it was completely at random. The food was amazing and we had a view to match.
We ambled along the car towards Bar Harbor and took in some more sights. The day was crisp and the visibility totally clear. We could see for miles, and kept getting enticed by peek-views of the water.
Heading along route 3, we came upon the little town of Ellsworth. We walked the town for a little while, looking at all the local shops. It was really impressive how they didn’t seem to have much in the way of big business there. Everything seemed to be home grown, giving the town a really homey feel like it was just meant to be there.
[Ellworth]
We went further down the road and encountered a really unique antique shop. Decorated with all sorts of fishing/loberstering paraphernalia, it reminded us of the Lucketts store back home. The owners were on the premises, involving themselves in one ramshackle project or another about the property. The wife was involved in designing custom motorcycle seat covers while the husband was doing some woodworking around back.
[ antique shop pics ]
We soon came to one of the visitor centers to Acadia National Park, where we got our car pass and a very handy map. The ranger on duty there was extremely knowledgeable and helped us plan out a route for our two-day stay. Almost immediately outside the center was an amazing view. In retrospect it was just a small taste of what was to come, but at the time we were wide-eyed and excited to explore.
[ first big view ]
Crossing over onto Mt Desert Island, we passed by our stop for the night (Bar Harbor) in favor of checking out the park as much as we could. We took the eastern loop and stopped at just about every overlook along the way. Each one was unique, but they all had a raw, ragged look that I’d never seen before.