On beautiful Mt Desert Island, Maine

 

 

 

En route north to Mt Desert Island we stopped at a lobster shack and enjoyed our first lobster roll. This comprises lobster meat inside a hot dog roll with Mayo and lettuce. Fran had the lobster and lettuce, no roll. Lobster shacks are mostly painted red and are small food outlets beside the road. Usually on the shabby side but always attracting a crowd. Many have large wood fired boilers out the front going full bore. One cartoon we saw on a paper placemat depicted a lobster talking to a man saying "did you say you're taking me home to your hot tub? Cool!"

We enjoyed superb weather on Mt Desert Island and cracked out the shorts for the duration of our stay there. The main town on the island is Bar Harbor which is full of shops of all kinds, restaurants, ice creameries, cafes and, on our first day, hoardes of tourists from two massive ocean cruise boats. We discovered a great coffee shop in our first excursion into town. The guy outside told us that it had the best coffee in town....."You can even get a flat white" And sure enough, there up on the board was listed "Flat White, the Aussie way". Adrian was game and had one, declaring it was his best cup of coffee for the trip.

The park has stunning scenery and loads of hiking trails from easy strolls to death defying climbs. One of those is aptly named the Precipice trail. We did not attempt that one! The park is also criss-crossed by numerous carriage trails built by Rockefeller and now only accessible to bikes, hikers and horse drawn carriages. We did several good walks alongside the ocean, through the woods, around lakes and along boardwalks....and not a moose to be seen (despite Fran keeping a wary eye out) or a bear or a beaver, but stacks of squirrels ! We did see a snake and Fran's reaction was as you would expect. She jumped back in fright landing on Adrian's foot. We are very glad we included this part of Maine in our itinerary.

 

We drove down to Bass Harbor and saw the lighthouse which is still operational and read about the many chores of the lighthouse keeper. He didn't like doing the brass work which seemd to consume much of his time.

 

Today we drove to Portland, Maine staying at an airbnb place. The host family are upstairs and we are downstairs. They have been very welcoming and given us some good ideas for exploring the region tomorrow. At Wiscasset, 75 km north of Portland, we found Red's Eats, a lobster shack with a big reputation and a large following. Our host, Mary, in Bethlehem, New Hampshire, had told us about it, but we'd forgotten where it was until we saw the sign and the queue. Much to Fran's delight, they offered to make a lobster roll with gluten free bread ... And it was obviously delicious. Didn't take long to eat. Adrian, dedicated husband that he is, queued as well (for 40 minutes in the cold wind), but did not have one as his stomach was playing up. He did have a small taste of Fran's.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy