Puffins!

Jonesport, ME to Machias Seal Island

June 19, 2010

Today is our long awaited trip out to Machias Seal Island to see a large colony of nesting puffins. We are relieved that the day dawns clear and warm with just a little breeze—this bodes well for a smooth trip fifteen miles or so out into the open ocean.

We have to be at the town dock at 6:30 a.m., but getting breakfast before we go is no problem—the same little quick stop restaurant where we got our exceptionally tasty pizza last night starts serving breakfast at 4 a.m., because Jonesport (population 1,100) is a town of folk who make a living from the local waters, and they start their days early (like the captain of our Lucky Catch cruise who ran 100 traps in the morning before he started his day job). The captain of Chief, the boat that takes us to see the puffins, waves at a lobsterman working traps a few miles out, and tells us it is his father. His 84 year old grandfather goes out to haul traps everyday, too, he says. A poster we have seen all over town advertises a big raffle, and the main prize is ten two-bedroom lobster traps. This is a serious lobstering town, without a single restaurant advertising lobster dinners—we have left the tourist towns behind.

Our first sight of Machias Seal Island is the light, which is visible blinking to welcome us from several miles away. By the time I can see it, I am really looking forward to being on land again, even though the ocean is calmer than all but one day we have ever cruised in open Atlantic waters before. I am just a little out of practice, I guess.

The island is claimed by both Maine and Canada. Canada built the lighthouse, and the Canadian Coast Guard staffs it, their costs covered by the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs who is interested in maintaining keepers on the island "for sovereignty purposes." There is really no other purpose to be served by the keepers, since the light is fully automated now. A warden also lives on the island to protect the birds from excessive human interference. All of the positions—two lighthouse keepers and the warden---are double staffed, with each staffer serving 28 days on and 28 days off. Our tour manager sent strawberry shortcake out to the island with our boat, so we could deliver it to the island staff. Our guide says that they really appreciate fresh food, since they bring their provisions in with them when they change shifts, and most of their food is canned and frozen.

Saving the best for last, yes, we see puffins. We take over 700 pictures of puffins and their kindred razorbills today, from the boat and from a blind, where we are left to snap away for one glorious hour. The blind has small wooden shutters we can raise on all four sides. Outside, on the rocks just inches away from us are puffins and razorbills galore, preening, flying, socializing, and seemingly posing for our viewing pleasure. They are talking to each other with sort of a squeaky whooping noise. We can hear them scrabbling about on the roof of the blind, as well.

The puffins look comical, the razorbills quite elegant. We can't get enough of their antics, and the hour goes quickly.

Then we are back on the boat for the return trip, smoother than our trip out. As we leave, the water all around us is full of floating puffins, which our guide says can dive up to 120 feet and come back to the surface with up to 18 little fish in their bills. He also tells us that, crowded with birds as we thought the rocks were, because today is so warm (75 degrees), many of the puffins are staying out in the water where it is cooler, preferring not to hang out on the hot rocks. There are more puffins on the rocks when it is overcast and cold. Of course, there's a trade-off there—the trip out and back and the hour in the dark blind are bound to be far more uncomfortable for the bird watchers on days that the puffins prefer. In fact, there is probably a direct inverse correlation between puffin comfort and human comfort.

For us, the puffins on Machias Seal Island not only exceeded our expectations, they exceeded our imaginations. We can't imagine how this could be a better day.

Exploring Acadia by Bicycle

Acadia National Park

June 18, 2010

Just about every visitor to Acadia National Park takes the Park Loop Road, a 27-mile loop that winds southward along the rocky coast, then turns inland and heads northward through the woods. We did the coastal part of the loop, stopping often at turnouts offering views of surf crashing against rocks at the base of pine-covered cliffs—the iconic Acadia postcard shot.

We scrambled over the rocks at Otter Point, the place where Samuel de Champlain is believed to have run aground in 1604 and met members of the Wabanaki tribe. It is Champlain who gave the island where the park lies the name l'Isles des Monts-deserts, now translated to Mount Desert Island. (The places that he named in Quebec, which he founded, still keep their given names, but more on that later in the trip, no doubt.)

When we made the inland turn in the loop road, we stopped at a parking lot near Jordan Pond, changed into our biking clothes, and did our inland park sightseeing the way John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s guests did—by carriage road.

John D. and his wealthy friends who summered on the island set aside the land for Acadia National Park back in 1901, and today it remains the only national park comprised entirely of donated land. Rockefeller's favorite way to tour the island was on carriage roads, and he viewed the arrival of cars on Mount Desert Island in 1913 as an event that had the potential to destroy his vision for the park. Undaunted, he spent the next 27 years building winding scenic carriage roads all over his property. Gently graded and covered with crushed stone, the 45 miles of carriage roads he built are still car-free today, and a wonderful way to explore the woods and inland waters of the park.

We followed a helpful ranger's advice, and started our adventure with a 3 mile loop around Day Mountain. We used all our gears on that one, and learned that "gently graded" was a relative term. But we were up for more adventures, so we continued on a longer loop that took us over hills and dales, past panoramic views and downhill to the shore of Bubble Pond, so named for two bubble-shaped mountains along its shore. We had a picnic lunch beside the pond and then continued on the very hilly trail to Jordan Pond. We first spied the pond from high above, after a long climb high on the side of a mountain. One of the best parts of the ride was our flying descent down to pond level, followed by just one more small hill that took us back to the elegant Carriage House at the entrance to the carriage trail.

We couldn't have had a better day for a ride, although the temperature did climb to ninety degrees by the time we were done, and some of the natives were complaining about the heat. We knew the perfect antidote for heat, especially after a caloire-burning bike ride--ice cream. So on our way to our next adventure at Jonesport, we stopped at a roadside ice cream stand and ordered cones. They were exceptionally good, and we learned why--they serve Gifford's Ice Cream, a Maine company which has been judged world's best ice cream three times at the World Dairy Expo.

The Rain in Maine Falls Mainly on the Coastal Plain

Freeport to Bar Harbor

June 17, 2010

We are starting to think that the reason there are so many lovely gardens around here is that they are sprinkled daily by Mother Nature, no human intervention necessary.

Fortunately, the rain lets up just long enough for us to pack the car and make a stop across the street from our charming family-owned motel to take a picture of this classic roadside attraction. Known by the locals as the FBI—Freeport Big Indian—it has stood here since 1969, when it was erected to call attention to the Casco Bay Trading Post, a gift shop specializing in Native American souvenirs. The Trading Post is long gone, but the 25 foot tall fiberglass Indian continues to stand guard over the Route 1 gateway to Freeport.

For our next big event, we drop by the L.L. Bean Flagship Store a few miles down the road for a commemorative photo next to their 90^th Anniversary Boot, which is surely the World's Largest Boot. No need to shop there today—since all the L.L. Bean Shops in Freeport are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, we did our shopping last night. (Dick emerged with a bulging shopping bag, and I found nothing.)

Today is a very special day at L.L. Bean—they are hosting the Maine Moose Hunting Permit Lottery, and they have activities scheduled all day to celebrate, including a moose call seminar and a free archery range. Over 40,700 people have applied for moose hunting permits this year, and starting at 6 p.m., they will draw and read out the names of the lucky 3,140 people who get permits. Last year, 82% of people with permits actually bagged a moose.

As we driving through driving rain, we spy a far more interesting retail operation up the road a ways—the Maine State Prison Showroom, selling merchandise made by prisoners at Maine State Correctional Facilities, and staffed by prisoners and uniformed corrections personnel. Decoys, model sailboats of all sizes fully rigged, furniture, wooden toys, gifts and souvenirs—the place is packed with merchandise, including some artful one of a kind sculptures made by creative prisoners with a lot of time on their hands. I am most intrigued by these lovely carved ball and chains, which are labeled "wedding gifts," but not needing any wedding gifts right now, I settle on souvenir toast tongs.

We manage to get to the Acadia National Park Visitor Center just in time to talk to a ranger about planning our day at the Park tomorrow, and to see the last showing of the day of the orientation film about the park.

The skies have finally cleared by the time the film is over, so we decide to drive the Pink Cadillac—by which I mean drive the road that climbs up Cadillac Mountain, which is mostly comprised of pink granite. At 1,345 feet, it is the tallest mountain on the East Coast, and the panoramic views from the top are magnificent. We enjoy walking the trails all around the summit, and by the time we are done, it is getting to be dinner time.

The town of Bar Harbor, at the southern end of the park, is teeming with restaurants. We decide on Havana, a small bistro specializing in fine dining Latin American cuisine, and end up sharing the best meal of our trip—an appetizer of seared foie gras over sautéed plantains; the best paella we have ever had, made with fresh local lobster, clams and mussels; and a dulce de leche molten cake served with vanilla bean ice cream for dessert.

Our hotel room looks out over the harbor, but we scarcely have time to enjoy it before dark—it has been a very full day.

Lobsters and Lighthouses

June 16, 2010

Portland, Maine

In our most fun adventure of the trip so far, we went lobstering today aboard the Lucky Catch. Donning our rubber aprons and gloves, about a dozen of us motored around Portland Bay in a lobster boat, learning hands-on how to do what lobstermen do. We hauled eight traps, emptied them, measured the lobsters (none turned out to be big enough to keep), emptied the old bait sacks (attracting lots of gulls), refilled them with fresh fish, and reset the traps.

Along the way we learned lots of interesting information, like how to tell male lobsters from females, and how Maine lobstermen practice more sustainable fishing practices than their New Hampshire rivals. In Maine, if a female with eggs ends up in a trap (females carry their eggs outside their shell in a black tarry mass), the lobsterman cuts a notch in her tail and throws her back in. Any lobster with a notch in its tail is released, maintaining fertile females in the wild to keep breeding. New Hampshire lobstermen don't respect notched tails—at least according to the Maine lobstermen.

To get a lobstering license in Maine, you have to apprentice first, then go on a wait list for a license. Five people have to give up their licenses for each one added, and the wait is three or more years. The first year, you are licensed for 350 traps, then you get to add 100 each year, to a maximum of 800. Our boat captain runs 100 traps every morning before he starts his first tourist run of the day at 10 a.m. There are no official territories, but there are informal understandings about where people set their traps. Misunderstandings can get ugly—one lobsterman recently shot another in the throat over a territorial dispute, and they were related by marriage.

According to our lobsterman guide, a mind-boggling 75 million pounds of lobster were harvested in Maine last year.

While tooling around the bay, we also enjoyed a maritime view of lots of lighthouses. We stopped at one spot where there are more lighthouses visible than from any other point in the country—a total of six lights, seven if you count twin lights in Cape Elizabeth separately, although they are a dual aid to navigation.

The most noteworthy of the lights is the Portland Head Light, commissioned by George Washington in 1787. It is the second oldest light in the country, and reputed to be the most photographed. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, and frequently visited this light in his youth, so some critics (especially those in Portland) believe the Portland Head Light was the inspiration for his poem "The Lighthouse." Captain Joshua Strout, a former sea captain, was its keeper beginning in 1869, and his wife Mary was Assistant Keeper. Their son Joseph took over from 1904 until 1928—a 59 year tenure for the family and their parrot Billy, who would say when a storm was coming, "Joe, let's start the horn. It's foggy!"

The Portland Breakwater Light is popularly known as "Bug Light," due to its diminutive 24 foot height. Built at the end of a 1,990 foot breakwater in 1875, it is modeled after a monument in Athens built in the 4^th Century BC, and features six fluted columns around its cylinder base. Although it is gone now, there used to be a keeper's house beside the light, with a kitchen and two additional rooms on the first floor, and two bedrooms upstairs. We can only imagine how crowded that house must have seemed when William Holbrook was the keeper, from 1910 through 1919. He lived there with his wife, his son and daughter-in-law, and their three children. One of those children recalls that they used a two-seater outhouse which emptied into the ocean below--"A draft of wind blew up through the shaft at high tide. We were very careful to check the wind and tide before going out there."

We can't end with that vision, can we? Let's close with a few lines from Longfellow's poem:

Steadfast, serene, immovable, the same

Year after year, through all the silent night

Burns on forevermore that quenchless flame,

Shines on that inextinguishable light.

Winslow Homer at Home in Maine

Prout's Neck and Portland, Maine

June 15-16

Intrigued by a story we read in Yankee Magazine, we visited Prout's Neck, Maine, where Winslow Homer's older brother Charles bought a large plot of land along the rocky ocean shore and built a family compound. He modified a carriage house on the property to serve as Winslow's studio, where he could sit on a second story deck and watch the waves breaking on the rocks below. It was a place of refuge for him from 1883 until the day he died there in 1910. We made a pilgrimage to the modest studio, which is now dwarfed by elegant summer homes tucked in the hills all around it.

Winslow liked to walk a cliffside path near his studio with his dog, Sam. Following in his footsteps, we took hundreds of photographs, finding alluring views around every twist and turn in the path-- waves broke on the jagged rocks; beach roses grew from tiny crevices; calm pools reflected the sky and revealed sea life below; birds soared and floated; juniper trees blown by eons of ocean wind bent in ikebana poses.

The next day, we went to the Portland Art Museum, which has a large collection of works by Winslow Homer in a show entitled "The Poetics of Place." Seeing his painting "Weatherbeaten," we imagined we had taken a photo of the place along the cliffside path where he painted it in 1894, although he was there on a far stormier day than yesterday when we clambered over the rocks. (Compare our photo above with his painting, and see if you agree.)

We also watched a video about his studio, which the museum has recently acquired. We saw the studio from the outside yesterday, but came to appreciate it better, inside and out, today.

While the Portland Museum has many wonderful works by other artists whose work we enjoy—Renoir, Monet, Mary Cassat, Degas, Cezanne—it has an exceptional concentration of works by artists who lived in Maine or painted Maine subjects. For example, although most people associate N. C. Wyeth with Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, he also had a home in Port Clyde, Maine, and his painting "Dark Harbor Fisherman" was one of our favorites for capturing the feelings we have for hard working watermen. (Tune in for more about those watermen in our next post!)

We could go on sharing our favorites from the museum for quite some time, but I'll end it here with a painting by Raoul Dufy, "Barques aux Martiques," which reminds me of our sunny visit to Bearskin Neck Wharf yesterday. Dick has photoshopped one of his photos from yesterday, making it more painterly to aid in the comparison.

Roadside Attractions

Salem, Mass. to Old Orchard Beach, Maine

June 15, 2010

We awoke to a bright blue sky with no rain in the forecast. Since we have had at least some rain every day for the past week, the weather was cause for celebration, and for a drive the long way from Salem to Maine--following the craggy coast, and stopping along the way to enjoy the sights.

We had a photo fiesta in Rockport, a town of narrow streets lined with colorful shops, all decorated with planters and window boxes overflowing with flowers. The wharf--known as Bearskin Neck in honor of an errant bear that perished swimming there--is filled with moored boats. A red shack with old wooden lobster trap buoys hanging on one wall is a focal point of the harbor, known as "Motif #1." It is reputed to be the most often painted building in America. We took over 100 pictures of it ourselves—from every angle, near and far.

The next town over from Rockport is Pigeon Cove, where there is a house built of newspaper layered 215 sheets thick (although, as you can see, it has a real shingled roof with wide eaves to protect it from turning to pulp in the rain). The furniture inside is also made of newspaper, much of it still readable. The two-room oddity was the dream home of Elis F. Sterman, who began it in 1922, and worked on it with his family for the next twenty years or so, consuming an estimated 100,000 newspapers in the process.

On to our next oddity, Lenny, "The World's Only Life-Size Chocolate Moose," made from 1700 pounds of superlative quality milk chocolate. Lenny has resided inside the Len Libby Candy Store in Scarborough, Maine since 1997, and looks pretty good for his age. There is a video running nearby showing how he was made, but it doesn't address the question of whether he has required renovation over time. It doesn't seem like chocolate should be able to last sitting out in the open for 12 years, does it? He looks pretty shiny—we are thinking perhaps many coats of varnish may protect his chocolate exterior.

Lenny has recently been joined by Libby, a 380 pound dark chocolate bear, and her two 80 pound cubs. We are not sure if Libby is the world's only life size dark chocolate bear, but there is a pretty good chance of it. (And, it probably goes without saying that we didn't leave Len Libby Candy Store empty-handed—if we had we would surely be the world's only visitors there who were able to resist the tantalizing aroma of chocolate and the wide array of hand-dipped chocolates and other candies, including beer brittle—made with a local lager.)

Our last roadside attraction, of a sort, was the studio of Winslow Homer. We'll talk more about it tomorrow, when we visit the Portland Art Museum, which has a large collection of Winslow Homer's work. As we will learn tomorrow, the museum recently acquired the studio, as well.

We ended the day at Old Orchard Beach, a classic beach town with rickety wooden hotels, motor courts and cabins packed shoulder to shoulder with ice cream stands and variety stores. Summer season still hasn't begun here, so the amusement park is eerily still, and half of the restaurants are still boarded up. Ever the bargain hunters, we snagged the most expensive room at the Sea Cliff Inn—with a big Jacuzzi tub, and a spectacular view of the ocean and a wide beach that stretched as far as we could see in either direction--for just $74, and then had lobsters for dinner at a local hang-out, where our tab came to a mere $27.

Ring Around Boston

June 13-15

We have both been to Boston lots of times, but missed interesting sights at its periphery, so we are doing a whirlwind tour around the edges of Boston, beginning in Quincy, home of the Presidential Adams family. The National Park Service now owns three homes where the Adams family resided in Quincy, and we hopped on their trolley that takes visitors to tour them all. Our second President, John Adams, grew up in a very modest farmhouse with just three rooms downstairs, including his father's shoe making shop, and two bedrooms upstairs. When he grew up, he moved in to a modest house next door to his dad's, and that is where John Quincy Adams, our sixth President, was born.

Fluent in French, at age ten John Quincy accompanied his foreign minister father to France and acted as his interpreter. By the age of fourteen, John Quincy was interpreting for a Russian Czar, and as an adult, he could speak and read thirteen languages (although he was not a terribly social person).

John's wife Abigail accompanied him on his foreign minister assignments to Europe, and after living in luxurious foreign embassies, she couldn't bear the thought of coming back to her small house on the family farm, so while they were overseas they asked friends to buy them a house they vaguely remembered. Unfortunately, the house turned out to be smaller than they thought, and its last owner was a Tory who was run out of town, so it had been left vacant for a while and was in disrepair when they moved in. They made a lot of renovations, first just to make it habitable, then to make it suitable for Presidential entertaining. Even with its additions and renovations, Peacefield was not large or showy. Its rooms were small and spare in their decorative detail—not at all comparable to Mount Vernon or Monticello. The most impressive part of the house was the stone library constructed to hold John Quincy's 14,000 books. He never got to see it—he specified in his will that he wanted it built to protect his books and papers, just as Presidential Libraries administered by the National Archives do today.

Which brings us to our next activity—visiting the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, an awesome architectural statement by I.M. Pei on the U. Mass Boston Campus. What stands out about this museum for us is how much it uses televisions to tell its stories, perhaps because Kennedy was the first President to truly understand the power of the medium and to use it in a highly telegenic fashion (as did Jackie). The Nixon/Kennedy debates, which Kennedy pressured Nixon into doing, were the first televised Presidential candidate debates, and Kennedy did the first live televised news conferences—averaging one every sixteen days of his Presidency.

It was interesting to see that, like John Quincy Adams, JFK accompanied his foreign ambassador father on his missions, in Kennedy's case acting as his father's secretary. We were reminded how many positions President Kennedy handed to family members once he became President, and how well his patronage seemed to work out—those Kennedys and Shrivers sure are hard-working do-gooders.

We spent an evening in Hull, a gritty beach town on a long sandbar that reaches from the south shore toward Boston Harbor. We stayed at the Nantasket Beach Hotel, in a spacious room with a balcony and a view of the ocean, a Jacuzzi tub and a fireplace, all for just $89, with a coupon. We could hardly believe our good fortune. It was only when we finally went to bed and found that the mattress sagged like a hammock, dumping us both into a pit in the middle, that we realized that the single most important non-optional part of the room was a big problem. Fortunately, there were two beds, so after clearing all our suitcases and reference materials off the second bed, and making a wall of pillows along the side next to the air conditioner to shield him from the cold breeze, Dick moved over there, where it was slightly less saggy, albeit more drafty.

Our next evening was spent far less eventfully and far more pleasantly at the Henry Derby House, a Bed and Breakfast Inn in Salem, known best for its 1692 witch trials. Salem also enjoyed a brief period as a busy port city--Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote most of The Scarlet Letter while working in the port's Customs House.

We couldn't help ourselves—we had to go to the city's most popular Witch Museum (and there are quite a few to choose from). The "Museum" consisted of a twenty minute show in a darkened room, featuring dramatic narration and grisly sound effects describing how a group of impressionable young girls became hysterical, thought they were possessed by the devil, and began accusing others in the town of being witches. The town got caught up in the hysteria, nineteen people were hanged, one was crushed with stones, and many more were imprisoned under horrible conditions. As the story was told, life size dioramas depicting the events were dramatically lit, and there were plenty of moans of possession and screams of agony. The scenes were reminiscent of the dioramas at the Latex Wax Museum last week, except the figures here looked like they were made using papier mache.

After the show in the dark, we were released to a large exhibit gallery where a docent led us as a group through the exhibits, and made sure we got the following messages. Witches in early civilizations were wise women who knew how to use natural medicine. The Christian Church demonized them to take away their power, because it threatened the male-dominated church. Witches are in the world today and they look just like you and me. The Supreme Court recognized their Wiccan religion in 1985, so they deserve freedom of religion as much as anyone else. The final message was an equation: Fear + trigger = scapegoat. Beneath this equation were the witch elements: fear of the devil + doctor who couldn't diagnose illness = witch trials. These were followed by several more historic situations that fit the equation—fear of war leading to Japanese Americans being scapegoated and put in internment camps, McCarthy playing on fear of communism to get people blacklisted, fear of the AIDS epidemic leading to scapegoating gay people.

Although we agreed with most of what was said there, we were still amazed at the liberal agenda of the museum, and we could tell that we are becoming real Southerners, because we winced at the religious angle—this Museum really badmouthed Christians and scoffed at their belief in the Devil. How far the pendulum has swung in Salem--from demonizing witches, to defending their honor (and making a lot of money off them).