"There's a charm about the seas that Maine offers; it’s like all the roughness melts into beauty."
Nicholas Sparks
My birthday was on a Wednesday this year, and it started at our summer home in western Maine with phone calls from my son and daughter and opening the thoughtful presents they sent. Part of my husband’s gift to me came next. We got into the car and headed east to the coast for a few days to enjoy the briny scents of the sea. The drive was under three hours, and much of the way, the roads were lined with lakes, ponds, and pine woods.
Our destination was the town of Rockland, home of the annual Maine Lobster Festival celebrated every summer around the last week of July and the first week of August. Visiting mid-week at the end of August, there were plenty of lobster restaurants available, but we enjoyed fewer crowds.
We arrived in the late afternoon, and one of the first things we did, even before checking into our hotel, was to follow the signs to the Breakwater Lighthouse. We followed Samoset Road to Marie Reed Park, which has picnic tables in a shaded area overlooking the harbor. We followed a wide gravel path along the harbor to the base of the granite breakwater, which extends almost a mile across the harbor. The lighthouse is at the end point. We considered walking out there, but the sky grew almost black and a rainstorm rolled in. It was time to check into our hotel.
Our room had a view of Rockland Harbor filled with sailboats and the ferry slip that is a departure point for the Maine State Ferry Service to some of the islands of Penobscot Bay: Vinalhaven, North Haven, and Matinicus. We toasted my birthday with sherry as we watched the rain on the water. Then we enjoyed dinner at Hill’s Seafood Restaurant, also facing the harbor. I asked our waitperson when the sailboats would come out of the water for the winter. To my surprise, her answer was, “Maybe November.” “Doesn’t the harbor freeze?” I asked. She said, “It used to. Not so much anymore.”
Thursday morning dawned sunny with blue skies. After breakfast, we drove out on the peninsula southeast of Rockland to Owl’s Head, ten minutes away. It’s a lovely, quiet resort and fishing community on the southern side of Rockland Harbor. We explored the shorefront facing a lobstering wharf and stopped to talk to an artist painting en plein air. He was working on a study of a gray house by the water. We drove a short distance to the Owl’s Head Light Station, where we walked a path next to a cliff and spoke to a couple visiting from Wales, who were enjoying taking photos of hanging moss on some of the trees. We hiked up a long staircase to the lighthouse, along with members of a cycling group, and the view of Penobscot Bay was expansive. Ferries and sailboats were moving through the deep blue water along the rugged coastline.
From Owl’s Head, we drove back through Rockland and into the next town, Rockport, a little more than ten minutes to the north, where we drove down a steep incline to the harbor front, walked around, and took some photos.
A five-minute drive took us into the busy tourist town of Camden, birthplace of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, and one of the few places on the Atlantic seaboard where mountains meet the sea. The Camden Snow Bowl is a small ski area to the west of the coastline. Home of the Windjammer cruises, Camden Harbor was filled with schooners, sloops, and all kinds of sailboats. Vendors were busy setting up displays at the waterfront for the Labor Day Weekend Schooner Festival. We had lunch at Peter Ott’s on the Water, and my lobster corn chowder was spicy and delicious. I asked for the recipe, and the waitperson told me the cook said the secret was Old Bay seasoning and tarragon.
After a return to our hotel in Rockland and a short rest, we walked along Rockland’s Main Street, peering into the many restaurants, shops, galleries, and art supply stores. The downtown is also home to several museums.
We started Friday morning with a visit to the Farnsworth Art Museum near our Rockland hotel. It specializes in American art and has one of the nation's largest collections of paintings by the Wyeth family: N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth, and Jamie Wyeth. Though none of them were born in Maine, all three painted and had (or in Jamie’s case, still has) homes in the mid-coast there: N.C. in Port Clyde, Andrew at the Tenant’s Harbor Lighthouse on Southern Island, and Jamie on Monhegan Island.
At the Farnsworth, I was also pleased to see a large, lovely painting of the view from Tri-color on Saddleback Mountain by Norma Randi Marshall, an indigenous Passamaquoddy Maine artist.
In addition to several buildings of galleries, the Farnsworth has a lovely garden containing several sculptures, including Bernard “Blackie: Langlois’s whimsical wooden camel, one of many large, wooden outdoor sculptures the artist made for the site around his Cushing, Maine home.
Before leaving Rockland, we made two stops: Jess’s Seafood Market, where we bought some fresh littleneck clams, which they packed in ice for us to take home, and The Spot (“speak burger to me”), where we bought ice cream cones made with Shaker Pond ice cream from Alfred, Maine, my final birthday treats.