Maine

There’s something about walking around a city that helps you get a real sense of the culture and personality of the place. We were able to do that on the very first day we were in Portland. It was a beautifully sunny day in the lower 70’s and it actually turned out to be the only sunny day we saw during the whole trip.

We walked through downtown Portland and found our way to the Eastern Promenade. It’s a beautiful trail along the eastern shore of the peninsula. There was also rusting remnants of a tourist train that once ran.

On our first full day, we took a 4 hour sea kayaking tour of Casco Bay. Thunderstorms were threatening to ruin the trip but it turned out it was perfect weather for kayaking. The seas were calm and there was no blinding glare of the sun off the ocean. (Last picture in series taken by Joe, our tour guide.)

We stopped on two islands during our tour. The more interesting of the two was a civil war era fort, Fort Gorges. It never saw any action during the Civil War but was used as a stockpile depot during the World Wars. It is now abandoned but free for visitors to wander through. For all the True Detective fans out there, this place looked like Carcosa.

Maine is the capital of lighthouses so we had to check out at least one. It was a foggy morning when we visited the Portland Head Light which made it more obvious to why lighthouses exist.

We received a master class in lobstering from Captain Tom aboard the Lucky Catch. For $30 a person, you can ride along a working lobster boat and ply the trade. The bait of choice is herring, which they buy from a local fishery. In preparation for picking up the first trap, we stuffed the bait into a pouch which helps lure the lobster in.

After picking up the first buoy, Captain Tom put the rope in a winch which brought up two traps from the bottom of the bay. We take out the one unsuspecting lobster that was caught and measure him to see if he’s big enough to keep. Luckily for him, he’s a millimeter too small. After clearing out the old bait and loading in a fresh one, we pushed the trap back into the ocean.

Acadia National Park was the first National Park east of the Mississippi. We took a 3 hour drive up the coast to spend a day in the wilderness. The eastern side of the island is characterized by a rocky granite coastline which made for dramatic cliffs and views.

After a short lunch in one of the small towns, we decided on a 3 mile hike around Jordan Pond. The pond sits in the middle of the island next to Cadillac Mountain.

We were watching the radar pretty closely while hiking around Jordan Pond so we knew we were in for some rain right around 2 PM. We slipped our ponchos on and enjoyed the rest of our hike through the forest.

The sun finally decided to peek out from behind the clouds at around 4 PM. This was right in time for a great view from atop Cadillac Mountain and also for our drive around the rest of the park. We ended the trip with a photo by Wonderland trail on the southwest side of the island.