Maine: A Travelogue

What the fuck is a travelogue, anyway? I just realized I hate that word. I looked it up, Mirriam-Webster's has one definition as "a piece of writing about travel," which totally makes sense, I just hate the word. For the record, I also hate the words purchase, moist, dud, tot (as in tater), and smoothie.

So Maine! Joe and I are now at 4 1/2 months of dating. Whoo-hoo! But who's counting? Well, I am. And I was expressly granted permission (by my older, wiser sister) to be "one of those girls" until six months of dating. One of those girls where I get to talk about Joe incessantly and in annoying ways.

This won't be annoying, though. I mention it only because Maine was a test: it was to be our longest period of consecutive time spent with one another. Maine was almost a full week of 24/7 contact, to be rendered that much more hostile by the trials and tribulations of traveling together. Anyone who's anyone knows that travel is a true test of a relationship's-- romantic, friendly, family-- strength.

And . . . we made it through. Not a blip on the relationship-strength radar. Sooooo . . . awesome.

And, oh yeah, in other news, Maine was pretty good too. Our trip, we discovered, was destined to be a dual exploration of the state: culinary and scenic. We ate ourselves into comas, and decided that, if we said we were taste-testing our way through the state, there was legitimate, scientific purpose for said comas, and it was all OK. When we weren't eating stuff, we were looking at stuff.

We started the trip in Kennebunkport, land of the Walker-Bushes. Our B&B was here, and we spent one day in Kennebunkport and one day in nearby Portland. Kennebunkport is cute, very cute. If I were a 70-year-old white lady (which one day I will be), I would love it. I think there's more going on there in the summer, cause there are pretty beaches. But in October, Joe and I just walked around the town, which is full of jewelry stores, art galleries, and other cutesy shopping. We dined on award-winning lobster rolls (a New England thing; Joe's first; and not an award-winner in my book), and. . . that's pretty much it. A welcome easy first day.. .. This picture is from a cemetary in Kennebunkport. Pretty, no? Look at that foliage!! I could die.(For all these pics, you can click on them and you'll go to a bigger version of them....)

Portland was next-- not the capital, but a cosmopolitan city that reminded me a lot of my hometown of Providence, RI. Small, with character even in the business buildings. . . the "Old Port" section with cute shops and cobblestone streets on the waterfront was adorable. Another day spent walking around, exploring, window-shopping, eating. Portland is the home of Duckfat, a restaurant that specializes in . . . cooking things in duck fat. Joe saw this in our guidebook and, unlike normal people, his little ears perked up.

Not only did the idea of random things cooked in duck fat excite him, he specifically wanted to go there to eat poutine, a culinary . . . thing. . . that involves french fries doused in both cheese curds and gravy. Yes. The image in my head showed steak fries covered in cottage cheese bathing in heavy brown gravy soup. In reality, it was a lot less disgusting looking (see below) and even pretty good to eat.



So, of course, we needed to keep things light for dinner, so we high-tailed it out to a little lobster shack on Cape Elizabeth, where you ate your $10 lobster overlooking an endless dark ocean. It was so gorgeous. Lobster was one of the things we taste-tested through Maine. The official judging included boiled lobster, lobster rolls, seafood/clam chowder, cole slaw, and blueberry pie/blueberry desserts.



The next day we rose early to drive the 4 hours further up the coast to Bar Harbor, which is the big town on Mount Desert Island. The rest of the island, pretty much, consists of Acadia National Park, which is famous for being, like, the most gorgeous place on earth. Rockefeller, back in the day, created 20-something miles of "carriage roads," dirt paths that only horse-drawn carriages, not cars, were allowed on. Today, you can bike/walk them. Also famous is the 27 mile "Park Loop Road," which you drive (or, for the Lance Armstrongs among us, bike) and which takes you through a good majority of the Park, hitting all the famous scenic sites. Joe and I were giddy with anticipation for Acadia. He loves all things outdoors and I love pretty views. I was even looking forward to stopping eating and getting my now-fat ass on a bike through the park.

Acadia was everything we dreamed. In October, the whole damn thing was just flush with color, those vibrant oranges and yellows and fiery reds that only New England can boast. The air was crisp and cool and you can take a deep breath without coughing. We drove the Park Loop Road with the windows down. We biked through the woods on the carriage roads. We had popovers at the Jordan Pond House, which are world famous. We sat and stared at trees and leaves and flowers and water and mountains and woods, which, in Acadia, are all within inches of each other. We drove to the top of Cadillac Mountain, which is the first point in the U.S. to see the sun rise. The one day we managed to get our asses out of bed at 5am to see said sunrise, it was raining. But we did sit, snuggled in 14 blankets and each other (it was damn cold), on top of Cadillac and watch the sun set.

I can't even choose pictures from Acadia to show what it was like. But I'll try:






The culinary tour continued in Bar Harbor, although by that point we had lobstered ourselves out. The chowdering continued strong, as did anything involving blueberries and dessert. Bar Harbor was also the first, and only, time we indulged the curious Maineism of "whoopie pies," which are . . . like, 2 chocolate cupcakes sandwiched together by vanilla frosting. They were everywhere! Pretty good, not my favorite.

We also took a whale-watching tour. I grew up in New England but have never done this. It's kind of like how I live in New York now but don't deign to go to the Empire State Building or Statue of Liberty, even though whales are totally cooler than that shit. Still. Also the whales are only on the East Coast from like April to the end of October. We had a great time-- we hit on at least two pods of whales and dolphins, and the big guys were so close to the boat! None of them fully breached all Free-Willy-style, but there was plenting of blowing and flipper and tail showing. The temptation to jump off the boat and ride a whale like Seabiscuit, if only for a moment, was somewhat overwhelming, but I managed to restrain myself.



A special note about our Bar Harbor B&B: Amazing. It hugs the cliffs overlooking Frenchmen's Bay, one of the bodies of water that surround Mt. Desert Island. 80 steps lead to a private beach, another path leads to 2 chairs on a deck on the edge of the cliff. It was truly breathtaking. I could have stayed in that chair for our whole time there. And our room had this supremely comfy bed and a whirlpool bathtub, which was so nice after a day of biking in the cold. (Actually, unbeknownst to us prior to getting there, but which is advertised inside the B&B, Jenna Bush stayed there and got engaged on the beach. That is truly icky to me, but it shows ya how gorgeous and romantic the place was.) This was the view from the B&B's back deck, although it scarcely does it justice:



Lesson of the day: So . . . overrall, the trip gets an A+. We managed to combine relaxation with activity, adventure, exploration, eating ourselves silly. . . and, despite about 18-20 hours with each other stuck in the cab of a pick-up truck, cramped and tired and repeatedly getting lost, we managed to do it all without so much as a snarky, fatigue-induced snap at each other. I think we are destined for great things. In Maine.