A real palate cleansing!
Took a much needed news break these last five days in the state of Maine, which is a lot like northern Wisconsin but with lobster.
Our homey, cedar-shingled inn on the southern tip of the island that hosts Acadia National Park had no CNN, Fox, or PBS — no TV at all. Missed it not. Avoided on-line social media. A good news blackout for renewed mental health. Madison and our politics can be crazy making. (You noticed?)
Instead, the Lovely Lisa and your too-often irascible bloggeur chatted with a retired oil man from Houston, a steel salesman from Gary IN, and paper mill operators from just north of the border in Ontario. A good breakfast with cupcake-sized quiche on the sunporch and friendly badinage with complete strangers does wonders for the soul.
We apologized to the Canucks for our boorish commander in chief. They seemed like decent people. Not once did they try to take unfair advantage of us. The retiree said he was on a quest for good American bourbon, which is now embargoed where he lives, just north of the New York State border. The next morning he reported scoring a bottle of Makers Mark.
Thought it best not to inquire what was wrong with Canadian whiskey, well aware that the stuff is best used in a mixed drink, not drunk neat. (Trump may win this trade war.)
Shared a beer with the oil company engineer and his lady over a raging fire pit behind the lodge. Chit chat you can’t get at the chain motels.
Wore a Badger cap to self-identify
Even the GB Packer score was off our radar until returning home from the airport at Portland, the biggest city in the state at something like 70,000 inhabitants (about the size of Oshkosh). Told people back here in MadTown that Blaska was going to BANGOR! Friday night 09-18-26 but some misunderstood it as a sexist boast. Happened upon Steven King’s turn of the last Century mansion on his 79th birthday in conjunction with son Max’s King “Dollar Baby” film festival.
Political campaign season is in full swing in Maine but sighted only four Susan Collins yard signs. Maine is electing its sheriffs and city council members in November, too. Wisconsin does those in the Spring of the year. Saw no evidence of farming.
Good breakfast at a Dysart truck stop — a local chain. They deliver wood pellets, fuel oil, and good old black coal for your home heating needs. COAL! No natural gas lines up this way.
The “desert” in Mount Desert Island, on which most of Acadia National Park is situated, was meant by 17th Century French explorers to describe the bare-rock mountain tops. The island is cleaved nearly in half, north to south, by a mountain-lined fjord, one of the few in this hemisphere.
The island is two-thirds of the way up the Maine coast. It measures 15 miles north to south by 13 miles wide, making it larger than Martha’s Vineyard and second only to Long Island NY. It’s dotted with fresh water lakes large and small, sloughs, marshes, and creeks but otherwise heavily forested. Its periphery is dented with bays and harbors with names like Seal Harbor, Otter Cove, and Somes Sound — and punctuated with many islands.
Our B & B, the wonderful Harbourside Inn, built in 1888, is decorated with vintage maps of the island. (Couldn’t find Cabot Cove, murder capital of the U.S.) Took home only one souvenir, a topographic map that records every walking trail, town road, and mountain. The highest of which is Cadillac Mountain. From October to March, its peak, at 1,530 feet, gets the nation’s first sunlight. The Atlantic Ocean is just two and one-half miles to the east. Got to register with the park rangers before you attempt its summit. We drove on.
Did prowl two wonderful gardens — the Japanese-inspired Asticou Azalea Gardens (still stunning out of season) and Thuya Garden, a riot of dahlias, zinnias, heliotrope, and lilies just outside the tiny (and toney) village of Northeast Harbor, our base of operations. Who knew there were so many varieties of moss (which thrive in this maritime climate) — like the flowers, all identified by name, in Latin and English! We’re a sucker for professionally maintained gardens when we’re not ogling the swank homes on the water.
You might know that the real estate office in town is a Sotheby’s outlet. John D. Rockefeller Jr., who once summered nearby, donated thousands of acres. He also caused to be built a network of “carriage roads” accessible only by foot, bicycle, horse, or snow skis. We walked one.
About lobster; it seems expensive here as at our favorite fish monger on Whitney Way. Maybe because we’re in tourist country, although we bypassed Bar Harbor. Couldn’t afford to stay longer, we’re not Houston oil men.
Is Willy Street on fire? Are we at war with Iceland?
We’re afraid to look.
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