Maine: A Love Story, in Pictures

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Coastal Maine. The pink granite shoreline of Acadia National Park under a bright blue sky with scattered clouds.

We already did the love letter to Maine. Twice, actually; the two-part essay is right here, with all the feelings and the first-night storm and the lobster I cooked in a rented kitchen. This is the other half of it: the pictures that didn’t make the essays.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about hauling a real camera on vacation. You come home with four hundred photos and room for maybe ten. So these are the ones I kept going back to; the quiet ones, the food, a tree that appears to be working out. I sorted them by day, the way the trip actually happened, which means some days get a whole gallery and a couple get a sentence and a shrug (Thursday, I’m looking at you).

Scroll slow. It was that kind of trip.

Days 1 & 2: Boston to Maine

We flew into Boston and went more or less straight to Row 34 in the Seaport, on the theory that if you’re starting a seafood trip you ought to start it like you mean it. This is the food-porn portion of the program. I have no notes, only oysters.

The next morning I made my Spenser pilgrimage, before heading towards Maine.

On the way out of Portland we stopped at Duckfat Frites Shack, which works like this: you order at a little frites shack, then carry your food into a big beer hall next door and find a seat. It’s bewildering for about ninety seconds and then it’s a great time. (The food itself didn’t quite live up to the legend, if I’m being honest. The vibe absolutely did.) Then the storm caught us north of Portland, and a drive that should’ve taken two hours took closer to five, most of it white-knuckled in the dark. We did not photograph that part. We were both too busy watching the mist for whatever was about to come crawling out of it. (We had Stephen King’s house on the itinerary for a reason. The man earned that fog.)

  • A round platter of oysters and clams on ice with crackers and sauces, candlelight behind, at Row 34 in Boston.
  • A large industrial beer hall with long communal wooden tables, string lights overhead, and a crowd of people eating.
  • The shoreline out front, on a properly gray Maine morning.
  • A blue 2 story house with white trim and a deck stretching across the back.
  • A small gray-blue shed at the rental with two blue kayaks stored under the eave, fall foliage around it.

[ Days 1 & 2: An oyster dinner, a Spenser tour, a stormy drive, and a blue cottage on the Maine coast]

Days 3 and 4: The Cottage

Then two days of doing very little, on purpose. We bought seafood from the people who’d pulled it out of the water, walked the rocky shore out front, and sat on the deck until the light gave out. And then it got dark, really dark, the kind you don’t get anywhere near a city. So many stars we could pick out the Pleiades with the naked eye; shooting stars if you were patient enough to wait for them. We spent every single night out on that deck, spellbound, necks craned back, saying nothing.

  • A weathered gray wooden shed with peeling paint and an antique stained-glass window set into the wall.
  • A seagull flying low over a seaweed covered rocky shore.
  • A rocky tidal shoreline on a gray day, a small working waterfront village across the water.
  • A bowl of unshucked oysters on ice.
  • A table set with a bowl full of shucked oysters on ice, 2 boiled lobsters, a sleeve of crackers, some cocktail sauce, and a small bottle of Tabasco sauce
  • Coastal Maine sunset, the sky going pink and gold over calm water and a rocky shoreline, seen from the rental cottage deck.
  • More of the star filled night sky.
  • The Milky Way arcing over dark water at night, faint lights on the far shore. Jupiter is bright enough to cast reflections on the water and the Pleiades are clustered in the lower left of the sky.
  • A star-filled night sky over water with a faint meteor streak near the center.

Day 5: Bar Harbor

Day trip to Bar Harbor. We walked the Bar Island land bridge at low tide (you stroll right across the ocean floor for a couple of hours, and then the tide takes it back), bought Christmas presents in October like the responsible adults we apparently are, ate more lobster rolls, and parked ourselves on the deck at the Bar Harbor Inn pretending we summered there. The beer was an Elaborate Metaphor and the ghost tour was creepy.

  • A lobster roll on a toasted bun with regular and sweet potato fries and dill pickles.
  • A wide sandbar land bridge exposed at low tide, people walking across toward a forested island.
  • A wide sandbar land bridge exposed at low tide, people walking across toward a forested island.
  • A single white feather resting on a dark rounded stone among sand and beach pebbles.
  • A tall can of beer with an overlapping rainbow pattern and the name Elaborate Metaphor. Next to a stein of cloudy beer with a frothy white head.
  • The leader of our ghost tour standing in front of the old Bar Harbor bank building. He's wearing a frock coat and a top hat and carrying a blue shaded lantern.
  • A slighly blurry photo of the tour guide bathed in yellow street lights. Still wearing his frock coat and top hat and telling more stories.

Day 6: Lubec and West Quoddy Head

We drove out to Lubec, the easternmost town in the country, to see the West Quoddy Head Light. It was thoroughly fogged in, which I maintain only improved it. There was a porcupine somewhere in the grass, there were trails through the spruce, there was a tree that looks like it’s flexing. And we ended the day in a tiny harbor restaurant eating blueberry pie (because Maine), looking out across the bay at Canada, close enough to wave. The Lost Fishermen’s Memorial down by the water is the one that stuck with me.

  • Looking out over the water; there are boats in the harbor and islands further out. In the foreground is a low hedge blooming in pink and white.
  • A long granite stone on a gravel path says "LOST FISHERMEN'S MEMORIAL"
  • A section of rocky shoreline on a misty gray day.
  • The back side of a red and white striped lighthouse tower and a porcupine grazing in the grass in the foreground
  • A porcupine rooting in the green grass.
  • A red and white striped lighthouse with a small white building attached at the left side.
  • A long wooden staircase descending through brush to a rocky cove, a person in a blue jacket partway down.
  • The red-and-white striped West Quoddy Head Light on a headland above a fog-shrouded cobble beach.
  • A shoreline made up of ocean smoothed rocks and pebbles with the rocky coast stretching out to sea on either side.
  • A spruce tree with a trunk covered in large rounded burls, standing in a grassy picnic area.
  • a closeup of bright green moss with a few autumn leaves on the edge
  • A narrow dirt trail winding through tall spruce trees and golden grasses in soft fog.
  • A thick slice of blueberry pie with a flaky crust on a white plate, filling spilling out.

Day 7: Nothing

Thursday we did nothing, and I have the photographic record to prove it (there isn’t one). I drove down to the L.L.Bean outlet in Freeport and came back with a classic Bean tote for me and a pair of sweatpants for Zach; he took a nap. A genuinely perfect day.

Day 8: Acadia

Our last full day we drove the Acadia Park Loop Road, which earns every word of its reputation. The light kept changing on us all afternoon, blue sky to brooding clouds to that soft gold dusk over the granite. We walked down the huge granite slabs, found tide pools, and gorgeous views. That evening we had our last Maine supper at Galyn’s.

  • A lobster roll topped with a drizzle of mayonnaise, and crispy fries.
  • Smooth colored cobbles resting in a clear tide pool wedged between two large granite rocks.
  • Acadia’s rocky coast at dusk, the sky soft gray and gold over dark water and rounded boulders.
  • Coastal Maine. The pink granite shoreline of Acadia National Park under a bright blue sky with scattered clouds.
  • Acadia’s rocky coast at dusk, the sky soft gray and gold over dark water and rounded boulders.

Day 9: Home

And Saturday we drove back to Boston and flew home, which is the part of every trip that nobody photographs, because nobody wants to remember it.

That’s Maine. If the essays were how it felt, this is what it looked like. Y’all go see it for yourselves; just pack a rain jacket and lower your expectations about the fog, which is to say raise them.

P.S. Yes, that’s Zach on the stairs down to the cove. He is, as is his way, half out of frame and entirely fine about it.

P.P.S. The blueberry pie was every bit as good as it looks. I have Opinions about wild Maine blueberries versus what I can get here in Georgia, but those are for another post and possibly another argument.

P.P.P.S. We bought those Christmas presents in October and I had lost one of them by December. Authenticity, folks.