This post is late, because our Friday was a late night with many fabulous cocktails, so it might have been a little too hard to get it done on Saturday morning, what with travel and flight and stuff.

On Friday, we began by going across the road to the College of the Atlantic to snag breakfast at their café, which was not open because they’re not in session yet. This campus focuses on human ecology, and it’s lovely.

I made some notes for when I win the lottery and build the Lichtenbergian Retreat Complex.

We then made our way to Acadia National Park.

Acadia is the only National Park in the northeast, which is odd I think. It sprawls across several islands and contains multiple features of interest. There are shuttles there, just like at Grand Canyon, so we hopped the Loop and rode it straight around. Because we were on a tight time schedule, we didn’t hop on and off. Instead, we noted where we’d like to visit, then drove back there.

One of those points was the Wild Garden, where volunteers have created a small garden with different areas representing the differing biomes in the park: conifer forest, bog, pond, roadside, etc.
I was there for the ferns. I will now bore you with multiple photos of ferns.

There were other plants, of course.

And frogs.

One of the attractions of the park is Sand Beach. “Sand” Beach, I hear you ask? Yes, of course: New England is not known for its pristine white beaches, and this place is an anomaly. In fact, it’s the only one. Its cove has a rocky island blocking the ocean’s full access, and so the surf has pounded shells into sand which has accumulated like it does normally elsewhere in the world.

Not pictured: a group of children in bathing suits frolicking in the freezing water. Mainers, amirite?

(In creating this post, I found on the official park website that Sand Beach and Thunder Hole (a tidal thing) were closed that very afternoon because of the storm surge from Hurricane Dorian. We escaped just in time, apparently.)

Have some seaweed.

We then drove to the peak of Mount Cadillac, the highest mountain east of the Mississippi.

It was stunning. Like Grand Canyon, there’s nothing to keep you from plunging to your death if you’re an idiot. The views are spectacular: rocky coast, islands, Bar Harbor.

The plants are already getting ready to go for fall.

Maine is not called the Granite State for nothing. I liked the lichens.

Finally it was time to head back south. Normally we would have snagged a hotel room online during lunch, but we skipped lunch while we clambered around Mt. Cadillac—snacks only—and so we found that it was harder to find an affordable room on the road mid-afternoon. We had planned to return to Portland (there was a distillery I wanted to visit), but we ended up in Augusta, the capitol, at the comfortable—if kitschy—Senator Inn.

A capitol city, bustling with attractions and nightlife, right? You are thinking of Atlanta. Augusta is not that.

We did our research on where to eat and ended up in Hallowell, a small community right on the other side of Augusta. The Liberal Cup is a foodie place posing as a brewpub, and the meal was delicious. I especially appreciated their cocktail menu:

We asked our waitress where she would recommend for music and cocktails, and she immediately said, “The Maine House: Leah makes the best cocktails in town.”

Y’all.

First of all, it was tiny, it was crowded, and it was fabulous. There was a duo up front playing all the top 40 covers—my Lovely First Wife sang along to all of them—and the cocktails… Leah is a genius.

The Plaid Shirt is one of the best cocktails I have ever had, and everyone else was in heaven with their choices as well.

The duo up front took a break, and we strolled around Hallowell (it’s only a couple of blocks long) looking for our next good time.

Hallowell is our kind of place. This was on the wall on one of the buildings:

And this is what they do for fun:

If you don’t know what contra dance is, think Jane Austen movies. As I said, my kind of people.

By some schedule unknown to us the musicians at every single place were on break, and we decided we would head back to downtown Augusta and check out the night life there.

We headed specifically to The Oak Table & Bar, right there on State Street past the Capitol.

There we encountered Kyle, another genius. Tall, still athletic—he was ranked 37th in the nation as a lacrosse player in high school—and voluble, he made fabulous cocktails while we grilled him on how he got to where he is. Cool story: in the service, his buddies paid for him to go to bartending school because of his skillz. Out of the service, he was considering a 6-figure career in security consulting, but then had a son, now three years old, and he made the decision to stay home instead. We loved him.

By the time we emerged, Augusta had turned out the lights. We were literally the only car parked on the street.

We slept, we rose, we breakfasted, we drove to Portland, and we flew home. The end.

Next: Pro Tips.

We headed north out of Freeport, determined to stick to U.S. Hwy 1 as we drove towards Bar Harbor, thinking perhaps it would be like California’s Hwy 1: we’d whoosh up the coast like in a car commercial, zooming along the rocky coast towards lobster nirvana.

It seems we were misinformed. Hwy 1 will sometimes hug the coast, but it more often resembles a drive through north Georgia. However, the towns are much quainter, New England having invented the concept. (I was driving today, so unfortunately I don’t have any photos of all the quaintness.)

You do come across things:

Our immediate goal was the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland. This collection was started by the Farnsworth family and is now a city block of buildings and exhibits. Its main claim on our attention was the repository of Wyeth family work: N.C. Wyeth, Andrew, currently living Jamie, and a small flock of other relatives.

But the first exhibit to catch our eye was a small gallery of screens. It was lovely:

This was a fascinating piece of woodwork, and then you walked around to the other side…

…and found this dazzling, gold-leafed version. If I have time when I get back, I’ll share a video of how the surfaces reflected each other as you moved around.

There were a couple of others, all beautifully crafted.

The actual first exhibit we saw was an exhibit of Jamie Wyeth’s portraits of his wife Phyllis, who died this past January. She was an avid horsewoman—her horse Union Rags won the Belmont Stakes in 2012—and was known for her independent spirit, despite having been injured in an auto accident in her early 20s. She was a lover of animals, and Jamie painted this “tapestry,” as he called it, to celebrate that.

Phyllis is the figure on the right in the red hat, zipping through her farm on her motorized scooter.

Outside the main museum is the Farnsworth complex, including the original Farnsworth homestead…

…and the Wyeth Center, housed in a converted Methodist church.

There we found an exhibit of Jamie Wyeth’s work, Untoward Occurrences and Other Things. Jamie is, for lack of a better word, a deeply weird artist. We decided that he either consciously or unconsciously decided to be the weird kid, playing off his father and grandfather’s reputations as calm, rational, organized, and beloved. He paints with bravura, but the paintings in this exhibit at least present you with some very disturbing narratives.

For example, one of the paintings is of the artist Rockwell Kent, whom Jamie apparently had a big old man-crush on. Kent is standing on a beach, with a fogbound cliff behind him. You don’t even notice the vague dark figure plummeting headfirst off the cliff. At first. The fact that this may reference a lover of Kent’s who was found dead beneath the cliff is just part of the weirdness.

Worth seeing, the whole museum.

(There will be more discussion of some of the art over at Lichtenbergianism.com next week.

We found a chocolate place, a “beans-to-bar” establishment. The chocolate is good, but on the whole just buy locally: the owner’s presentation on how they do it is not as interesting as he thinks it is, and his pronunciation of ‘cacao’ is odd for one whose business is all pods and nibs.

Here’s a fun thing:

“Collins” is Maine’s “moderate” Republican senator Susan Collins, who is renowned for being awfully concerned about her party’s shenanigans. She will wring her hands, issue sternly worded statements—and then still vote for the president (who imprisons children)’s agenda. The final straw seems to have been her vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. At any rate, the voters of Maine are out to get her. Good for them.

Onward. We stopped in Camden for lunch at the Waterfront Market.

Food was great, and the view couldn’t be beat. Traffic was heavy, though, what with one yacht or another heading out to sea.

On up the road to Bar Harbor. We had to swerve off into the overlook area when this appeared:

Hard to see, but it’s the tallest inhabited structure in Maine: the Penobscot Narrows Bridge and Observatory, with a 40-story observation deck in the left-hand tower.  It’s part of the Fort Knox state park. It was about to close, so we passed it by. Perhaps on our way back?

At lunch, we all whipped out our phones looking for lodging in Bar Harbor. Pricewise, the Edenbrook Motel was acceptable, and it looked charming in the photos. When we got to Bar Harbor, my phone got confused and took us up into the hills to a golf course. When I corrected it, we were led through neighborhoods until we came across what looked to be a seedy, rundown establishment.

I was excoriated for my choice in motels.

However, the rooms are huge, modern, and clean, and the view:

…well, let’s just say I was vindicated.

The sunset was nice:

We headed into Bar Harbor proper, found a parking place—which even in the off season is a feat; I cannot imagine trying to park during the season—and looked for a restaurant. We settled on Salt & Steel, and it was the best meal we’ve had so far. Great bar as well: they not only had green Chartreuse, they had Tom Cat barrel-aged gin as well—I could get a Bijou, and did.

Tomorrow, our last full day, we will spend in Acadia National Park, and then return to Portland.

We awoke in our cozy Chebeaugue Island Inn, which looks like this:

Well, I awoke. Everyone else slept in while I worked.

What am I working on?

The placement map for Alchemy. Why? BECAUSE HIPPIES CANNOT FOLLOW DIRECTIONS AND ARE JUST NOW REALIZING THEY NEED TO ASK FOR CHANGES IN THEIR PLACEMENT.

DESPITE THE FACT THAT I FINISHED THE MAIN DRAFT OF THE MAP ON SATURDAY BEFORE WE LEFT JUST SO I WOULDN’T HAVE TO WORK ON THIS STUFF.

KENNETH.

Even now, the hippies are squinting and poring and telling their computers to Enhance just to get a sneak peek of where their camp is and who their neighbors are.

Tough noogies, hippies.

My Lovely First Wife took off for a bicycle ride around the island and had a great time. But then she’s adventurous like that.

After a late breakfast, it was time to pack and head to the ferry. More about that in a moment. First, here are the treats we found in our room.

Shame on you! Those are lobsters.

We got to the ferry and waited while all these people poured off and started walking up the hill.

The crew unloaded all the Amazon packages, and then all those people poured back down the hill and back on the boat. Odd, we thought.

Not so odd as we set sail and the captain began murmuring indistinctly over the fuzzy speakers about this island or that: “murmur murmur WWII murmur murmur residents…” It transpired that the ferry is not mainly a transport between Portland and the islands, it is also a tour of Casco Bay—hence the debarking and embarking of all these people at each stop: we were taking the long way back to the city.

It’s always colder on the water, and today was actually nippy, which for me means FREEZING COLD. I was wearing a sweater, a lined coat, a scarf, a woolen hat, and gloves, and I was miserable.

The Lovely First Wife, on the other hand:

She gave free rein to her inner Golden Labrador and stood on the bouncing prow in the freezing seaspray for the entire ride.

Once back on shore, we retrieved the car and set off for Cape Elizabeth. We needed to see the lighthouses, because that is what one does in Maine.

Here, have a lighthouse:

It is indeed picturesque, as is the rocky coast of Maine. (Like the “mighty Colorado,” you have to say “rocky coast of Maine,” or they look askance at you as if you’re not entering into the proper spirit of the thing.)

More:

The place is not barren. Just of out camera range, there’s a wide variety of plants and shrubs.

See the little bee? She was just wallowing in the flower, having a great time.

Also there at Cape Elizabeth is a well-known lobster roll establishment. We had been told that these were the best, for a multitude of reasons, by people who know these things.

However, we are heathens and were not at all impressed with the concept or the execution. The blueberry pie, on the other hand, was primo.

Then it was back in the car and back up the coast to Freeport. (We did take a quick detour through Fort Williams Park to see another lighthouse, but didn’t stop.)

As we pulled into Freeport, we did a hard U-turn to go back and stop at the Cold River Distillery, where we sampled some gin and vodka. I bought the gin, of course. (No photo yet.) I was hoping it was the gin I had back at the Inn, and that I had misheard the name of it: Cold Shore, I thought. As it turns out, I had misheard it, but it’s actually Hard Shore, not Cold River. This is what gin will do to you, boys and girls.

We dropped our stuff off at the hotel, then headed back out. One of our company wanted to buy a pillow from CuddleDown, a local concern, because the pillows at the Inn were simply delightful.

Then we headed to the Maine Beer Company, which is a very nice establishment: they pay their workers an extravagant wage, plus three weeks of vacation, plus full healthcare, plus retirement. They donate to all kinds of ecological causes. They support local charities.

And their building is gorgeous:

Out of frame to the right is a pizza parlor. Great place for a date or a get-together.

We moved on to dinner at Tuscan Brick Oven Bistro. When you stop to taste the gin or the beer, ask where the best restaurants are.

And finally, late at night…

Can you guess where we are?

That’s right, we’re at L.L. Bean.

It was great fun to ramble through the enormous flagship store. However, I was really impressed to find that I needed nothing there. After five years of burning, I have everything I need for comfort and safety, although I did buy a “tick nipper” to keep in the first aid kit. Nasty little bloodsuckers—keep your mandibles off my bacon.

Finally, back to the hotel and bed.

Yes, we’re off again, this time to Maine. Don’t ask me why. Somehow going to Prague for the week was deemed impractical, and so (naturally??) the coast of Maine presented itself as the obvious option.

At any rate, we boarded a plane in Atlanta and landed in Portland a couple hours later. We snagged our rental car and headed into town.

Portland is charming, as advertised, and we had a long lunch at Dimillo’s, mainly because it took forever to fill our orders. The food was tasty.

Then we wandered a bit in Old Port, one of those great formerly dilapidated areas now booming with bougie tourist shops targeting the likes of us. My favorite stop was Vena’s Fizz House, a craft cocktail bar with a twist: they have an astounding collection of bitters, antique glassware, and almost every other cocktail accoutrement that you can imagine.

Their especial trick, though, is to serve you a fabulous cocktail, made with hard-to-find bitters and house-invented ingredients— then sell you all those ingredients.

Thus, the Campfire, with bourbon, lemon juice, smoky hops, Vena’s Bitter Armand. Here you see the drink with materials I had already selected for purchase:

And here you see the additional materials I purchased after finally tumbling to the shtick:

This trip is remarkable in that my Lovely First Wife, who is known for her rigorous planning of these things, decided that on this trip all we are going to do is fly to Portland, then drive Hwy 1 to Bar Harbor. It takes three hours to do that, and we’re here for four days. We have no reservations and no plans.

So at lunch, I whip out the phone and open up Hotel Tonight, and find a great deal for the Chebeaugue Island Inn, which is only 1.9 miles away from where we were lunching.

Here’s the thing: that’s 1.9 miles as the crow flies. After I had booked the place, I noticed in their blurb that I should call for the “ferry schedule.”

Wait what?

Yes, that’s right, there is no bridge to these islands. It’s ferry service only, and the last one of the day was at 5:45. Not a problem. I went to book our transport online, then rather than wait for their call to confirm, I called them.

That’s when I learned that ferrying a car was abnormal, usually done weeks in advance. And then it dawned on me: we park the car and just take our luggage on the ferry. Doh.

It also dawned on me that an hour-long 5:45 ferry ride meant we were on Chebeaugue Island for the evening. No prowling around the Old Port neighborhood for cocktails and funsies. No, our destiny was going to be a bit more… sedate.

And it has been fabulous. We were met at the ferry by the Inn’s van and driver (a charming young man from South Africa, whom we advised to look into winter employment at Grand Canyon or Lake Louise in Canada), and were whisked away to the Inn, the only such establishment on the island (pop. 350).

We had cocktails from the bar, watched the sunset from the lawn, and finally settled in for dinner, which was phenomenal.

We also decided that rather than brutalize ourselves to get up early enough to catch the 6:20 ferry, we’d just sleep in and catch the 11:35 ferry. I mean, what else do we have to do?