Back in Bar Harbor

When you're away from home for so long and have little in the way of scheduled commitments, knowing the day or date largely becomes irrelevant. Even holidays seem unimportant. I should have paid more attention.

Egg Rock Lighthouse at sunrise

At our shipboard briefing before landing in Bar Harbor Tuesday we were told that, in addition to the optional excursion, we could hop on the Island Explorer bus system emanating from the Village Green, which I use during my regular summer visits, to reach all points on Mount Desert Island. My plan was to bus to one of my favorite spots for watching the tide come and go. But the buses stop running immediately after the Columbus Day weekend, the "official" end of the season in Bar Harbor.

If only I had remembered that the Columbus Day weekend was last weekend, not next. My plan to visit my favorite rock and tide pool fizzled when I walked up from the waterfront to the Village Green and saw none of the propane-fueled buses with the L.L. Bean logo, which underwrites the service.

I could hire a taxi or Uber, but none were to be found: passengers from the largest vessel scheduled to call Bar Harbor this year, the Norwegian Escape with 4,270 berths, commandeered the town's limited car services, with another liner (Seabourn Quest, 450 berths) also in port. Of course, all these visitors made the merchants very happy, making the corner of Main and Cottage streets seem like Times Square; autumn's colorful maples and oaks in New England, even on an island where conifers dominate, make for thousands of leaf-peepers.

I wasn't prepared for an 11-mile round trip walk to my favorite spot near Otter Point. So I called Paul Woodfin, who with wife Mary owns Snell House where I've stayed whenever visiting Bar Harbor for the past 15 years. He took time for his day to drive me to my special spot, then picked me up to get me back to town. Many thanks, Paul!

I had sufficient time after Paul dropped me off to stop by the Thirsty Whale, which serves the best fried clams on Mount Desert Island. That, an Allagash White and three hours spent at my favorite place in the world made for a perfect day.

Comments

Salem: Great Knockers

Forget the witches or the House of the Seven Gables when visiting Salem, Massachusetts. Instead, see a great set of knockers, and a whole lot of whimsical metalwork, at Herb Mackey's Metal Sculpture Yard, the last house on Blaney Street aside the parking lot for the Salem-Boston Ferry. It's free, and I'm told the whimsical welder who created the metal creatures will come out to chat when he's home. On Saturday, after spending a delightful time over a lingering lunch with my cousins Susan and Rita, who took the train to Salem from their Cambridge homes, I took a slow stroll through downtown Salem, maneuvering among the witches, warlocks and hanger-ons who descend upon this historic maritime hub to commemorate a nasty period in American colonial history, the Salem witch trials. The hordes made the Halloween crowds who descend on my neighborhood for Eastern State Penitentiary's annual scare show seem puny. Salem's most notable cultural attraction is ...

A Canadian Thanksgiving

Once ashore in Halifax Monday I sought in vain to replenish my cigar supply, and pick up a Cuban or two to enjoy at sea. But it was Canadian Thanksgiving, and all stores selling decent stogies shut. Still, I wanted to enjoy a relaxing cigar after walking up and down the Spring Garden Road shopping district. I found as bench in the sun in front of the Halifax Memorial Library and lit up. Then I turned around to find Winston Churchill gazing upon me, undoubtedly as upset as when Yousef Karsh took away the PM's cigar to make his iconic photograph. I did my best to imitate the Churchillian scowl. A traveling companion from Glasgow thinks I nailed it. Smithsonian Magazine has an interesting account of the story behind the photo. The downtown shopping district of this city of about 400,000 was filled with people -- most of them tourists off the four cruise ships tied up a 15-minute walk away in the harbor, though some locals were taking advantage of the warm if overcast weath...

Newport: Memory of Childhood

To most the city of Newport, Rhode Island, is associated with the Gilded Age mansions lining Ocean Avenue and the Cliff Walk. For me it's the Awful Awful. The Awful Awful is a thick milkshake, but instead of being made from ice cream, milk and syrup, most of its dairy content comes from ice milk. It originated at Bond's, a northern New Jersey ice cream chain with an outpost in my home town, Elizabeth. It got it's name because it's "Awful Big, Awful Good". Drink three and get your name inscribed on the wall, plus a fourth for free. Two ice cream chains in New England took notice of the thick shake and bought rights to market it under the Awful Awful name anywhere but in Bond's home territory of the Garden State. But when one of them starting expanding, not being able to enter the New Jersey market was a major impediment, so they changed the name to Fribble. That's what the chain -- Friendly's -- continues to call its shake, though it...

Greenland Passage

Search This Blog