July 13, 2024 – Downeast Acadia, ME
Our day began with an exploration of downtown Ellsworth. It’s a busy place with a nice few blocks of shops and restaurants. Saturday is farmer’s market day in town but it was a rather limited affair. Sandy did notice one person had pea shoots that she purchased to use in salads. Lunch was BLTs at Flexit Café, a nice little place on Main St.
We wanted to explore the Schoodic Peninsula today. It is the location of the quieter, less visited, mainland section of Acadia NP. On our way down the peninsula we passed through Winter Harbor, one of a multitude of waterfront towns along this coast. It’s a pretty place with a nice waterfront.
There is a visitor center and a campground in this section of the park. We stopped in the visitor center to pick up a map and get a short briefing on what we’d find.
There are hiking and bike trails that roam through the wooded center of the park area and a one way loop road that follows the coast. We opted for the road.
Schoodic Point is at the tip of the peninsula. It gives visitors a wonderful, panoramic view of the water and nearby islands and land masses. You can negotiate the granite rocks to explore the details of the shore and watch waves crash into the rocks.
Nearby is the Schoodic Institute. The organization housed there is one of a network of non-profit institutes that study the science important to our national parks and work to educate the public on the importance of nature and of preserving these places. This particular one is partly housed in what was once a military listening post. The institute’s Welcome Center is in Rockefeller Hall, a large, impressive, French Eclectic Style building. Its construction was funded by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. as part of a deal involving an exchange of land that he wanted for his estate on Mt Desert Island for Schoodic Point and the building. We took in the center’s displays and headed on our way.
There were plenty of places to stop for the views and to walk the rocky shore. It was interesting to see where basalt found its way into the mostly granite rocks. The basalt is distinctly black in color and erodes in very different ways. We met a young woman who works at the Institute who gave us an overview of different kinds of rockweed, the types of seaweed that cling to the tidal areas of the rocks.
The one-way drive ended at the town of Birch Harbor where we just happened to notice Bunker’s Seafood & Spirits, a waterfront bar and restaurant. We enjoyed drinks at a window overlooking the lovely, small workboat harbor and conversation with Shannon & Bob who were camping nearby. The place had a nice menu and, as a bonus, we learned that the owner’s wife had celiac disease. Since her husband was the cook, many of their offerings were gluten free.
Completing our tour of the peninsula, we returned to the welcome center and drove through the park’s Schoodic Woods Campground. It’s a very nice campground with clean gravel sites complete with water and electric. It is out of the way but would be a nice base from which to tour.
Dinner was pasta with chicken meatballs and “Salad by Sandy” with pea shoots from the farmer’s market.
July 14, 2024 – Downeast Acadia, ME
Yesterday we explored Schoodic to the east of Ellsworth. So, today, we headed west with the towns of Castine and Stonington in our sights. Each leg of the trip would be an hour long but the prediction was for very high temperatures so time in an air conditioned car was OK.
We’d spent a night in Castine many years ago … on a sailboat. Cruising with friends, fog rolled in but we found our way to a mooring in the harbor and dinghied into the edge of town for just a few minutes. This time we drove into the center of town to find a lovely, gentrified downtown lively with visitors.
Surprise! Turns out the town was celebrating Bastille Day in honor of their French heritage. One whole block was cordoned off for a 100-place celebratory picnic. The downtown dock area was crisp and really nice. The reason was that a huge storm last year destroyed the old docks and replacement had just been completed a week or so ago.
We stopped in the visitor center and got the lay of the land from an informative guy who staffed the place.
Then we drifted through a few of the many studios that lined the downtown. Dice Head Lighthouse is at the end of town and it was open for tours on this special occasion. We started to walk there but it was farther than we thought and it was HOT! So, we decided that, given the temperature, we’d be happier driving.
The climb to the top of the lighthouse was a one-person-wide spiral staircase and only six people at a time could fit at the top. People were queued up in a small house waiting their turns. It was HOT in the enclosed space. Nevertheless, we waited our turn and were rewarded with a beautiful view all around town and the harbor.
Back in the car, we headed back out the peninsula and then south to Stonington. Stonington is at the south end of Deer Isle and is reached via a tall suspension bridge to Little Deer Isle and thence a causeway to Deer Isle. After another hour on the road we found downtown Stonington parking to be chock-a-block. Turns out we dumbed into their annual lobster boat race day!
Stonington is the most productive lobster port of Maine, landing nearly fifteen million pounds annually. Not bad for a population of only about one thousand people! So this is, understandably, a working port but the main street was lined with small shops & restaurants. The large wharf in town was crowded, though, with people there for the races. There were food trucks and a variety of displays by local organizations.
The races weren’t much to see, actually. A few boats at a time ran a straight drag race along a corridor lined with boats that were filled with local fans. Various heats were running and there were many classes. So all we saw were occasional boats roaring past in the distance. But we had some fun conversations with people on the docks.
On our way home we ditched our plans to make tacos for dinner, opting instead, for steamed lobster. We stopped to have a couple of 1½ pounders steamed at LDI Lobster at the Little Deer Isle end of the big suspension bridge we’d crossed earlier. Back at the campground Bill opened the lobsters while Sandy prepared a caprice salad with, you guessed it, pea shoots. Yum!
