Beach Bums

Thursday 6/16/11

We woke up to a sunny day and enjoyed a great breakfast buffet in the motel restaurant. I asked a waitress why they serve pork and beans for breakfast and she replied that "Mainers just love beans". Hmm, okay. We sat overlooking the bay and it was one of those scenes you could linger over with several cups of coffee, but we had places to go and things to do. 

We stopped in a cute little old town called Bath. It had several good shops and the best cooking store ever. Reminded me of a vintage Williams-Sonoma with lots of old character. It's interesting to note that every little town has at least one cooking store, and some have two or three. Meanwhile, Jeff found a fly fishing store on the edge of downtown right next to the Kennebec River. Yes, that's the river we floated down and fished on just three days ago. That's our river now!

We heard there was a large L.L. Bean store in Freeport, so we decided to check it out. Wow, there was much more than that! It was an entire enormous shopping center in an old town setting. Saying it was a "large LL Bean store" was an understatement: there were three huge LLB stores spreading over three blocks or more. Plus all kinds of other retail stores and outlets (see here). And it was here, in the little town of Freeport, that I cheated on Pottery Barn. PB is my favorite store/style, but I fell in love with the LLB home store. I got a lobster beach towel here and will have happy memories of Maine and this fun store when using it.

We had lunch at the historic James Tavern which was in an old home, circa 1779. We shared a sandwich and a cup of lobster stew which is like chowder without potatoes and with chunks of lobster. It was too buttery and rich. We've become lobster snobs!

Then we hit the L.L. Bean hunting & fishing store. My angler found a few flies to buy, so our trip to Freeport was complete.

We soon arrived in Kennebunkport and found it to be a pretty town. The homes were beautiful and there were lots of pretty flowers, and it was a pretty day which just makes a town by the sea extra lovely. We drove by the Bush family summer home. I'm sure their neighbors love people like us.

We decided to save Kennebunkport for the following day, so we drove another half hour to the little resort town of Ogunquit where we had reservations at 2 Village Inn. This great b&b was an old home perched waaaay up on a hill and had been totally renovated a couple of years ago. It looked like it had been furnished by L.L. Bean, so I was happy.

We went to the beach and we now know why New Englanders move heaven and earth to go to the shore/beach each summer. It's just not like beaches in the South. The sand was clean, the water was blue and the granite ledges were right behind us. I guess it was the hilly terrain combined with the perfect beach that stole our hearts. The water was too chilly to actually get in, but we had fun frolicking on the beach.

We drove down to Perkin's Cover and walked along a footpath above the rocky shoreline on Marginal Way Walk. I like this description I read: This delightful, exhilarating walk meanders by tangled bayberry and bittersweet bushes, gnarled shrubs of fragrant pink and white sea roses, shaded alcoves formed by wind-twisted trees jutting out onto high granite outcroppings, and humbling views of the mighty Atlantic with its varying seasonal moods.

While at Perkin's Cove, we had the first course of our dinner at Jackie Too's. We sat right by the water and shared an order of crab cakes. These were some of the best yet. As we were driving back to town, Jeff spied an abandoned lobster trap buoy sitting in a motel parking lot. I might have jumped out of the car and rescued it. I think it will look cute hanging on my potting table on the patio. There were several cute shops which thankfully stayed open past 5:00, so I did my duty and checked out a few.

We had a light dinner at Caffe Prego. Now this was a restaurant I had seen during the daylight and thought looked like a fun place, but didn't realized it was Italian until we got to our table and looked at the menu. I hadn't seen the sign or I probably would have given it a miss since it just seems wrong to eat at an Italian place while on the New England coast.

But we were so glad we went as the food was phenomenal. We had bruschetta and caprese with the best balsamic vinaigrette we have ever eaten. After begging asking for the dressing recipe, they were kind enough to write it down for us. Now we just have to convert it to normal quantities. Yeah, it started out with a gallon and a half of olive oil and went from there!

Freeport and Ogunquit were two towns we added into our itinery at the last minute. Our new friends in Camden suggested Freeport and Jeff found Ogunquit looking for lodging online a couple of days earlier when we realized b&b's in Kennebunkport required two night minimums. And these two towns turned out to be some our very favorites of the trip. Funny how that works.

Back at our b&b, we sat in rocking chairs on the high up front porch facing the ocean and watched the full moon take its place in the sky on this clear evening.  Meanwhile, my buoy rested comfortably in a bag under the front bumper of the car overnight. We'll deal with the stinky barnacles tomorrow:)