The Southern Coast of Maine

9/24/15 – 9/27/15 In Old Orchard Beach, ME

We left Bar Harbor, Maine and drove south, past Portland, and along the coastline to Old Orchard Beach --a quaint little town like many we have seen along the coast, and much like summer beach resorts all over the east and west coasts.  The East Coast is older though, and if not kept up, some of the buildings look pretty bad, especially here in the north where the weather is so cold in the winter.  However, the very rich from the eastern big cities like Boston and New York all built their ‘summer cottages’ along the eastern coastlines, and many of the mansions are unmatched in size and luxury.   Bar Harbor used to be one of those ‘gilded age’ destinations during the turn of the century, where families like Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, and Morgan built lavish mansions as their summer getaways.  In October of 1947, 67 of these huge mansions were destroyed by a wildfire, along with 170 other homes and several large hotels.  There was no way out of Bar Harbor, so the residents escaped by boat.  They never came back to Bar Harbor.

Friday. 9/25/15.  Today we drove further south to Dover NH, then back north along the coast, stopping at Cape Neddick to see the famous Nubble Lighthouse.  Here are some pictures of the lighthouse and a panorama of the coastline.

Nubble Lighthouse

Cape Neddick

Panorama of Cape Neddick and the lighthouse

  I met a very interesting man, Bill Thomson, who was an artist, and long time resident of Cape Neddick.  He came there in 1929 and never left.  He was selling his artwork at the gift shop and added our name and date to the a picture we bought.  Here it is.

  After asking him where to go for a lobster omelette, he sent us to the Lobster Cove.  We found it after a little driving around town.  They weren’t serving breakfast, so I had Lobster Pie – which was fresh lobster in lobster bisque and covered with buttered breadcrumbs and baked.  Wow, was it good!  Look at the big chunk of lobster on the spoon!

Lobster Pie

 Everywhere we looked were large homes converted to Bed and Breakfasts, and large Inns.  Here is the Ocean Inn in Cape Neddick.

The Ocean Inn in Cape Neddick

We drove through Ogunquin, another summer beach resort town.  We didn’t stop because it was just too crowded and no parking.  On to Kennebunkport (not Kennebunk, the city).

Kennebunkport

Another very crowded summer beach town.  Did not find the Bush family summer home, but did take a beautiful drive north up the coast.  We saw many big houses with acres of mowed grass in front (which we never see in California).  We drove through Biddeford, ME where we saw a huge old mill, and wondered what it used to be.  Clearly it must have supported most of the townspeople when it was operating.  Now it was closed, but parts were being refurbished into lofts, apartments, storage areas, and commercial and industrial spaces.  I looked it up and found that it used to be a large textile mill (Westpoint Stevens Mill) in the late 1800’s and at one time employed over 10,000 workers.  When it closed, the town almost died with it, but one businessman, bought up the buildings  (which house over 1.1 million square feet) and has started the refurbishing programs. Now that takes guts!

We ended up back at our campground in Old Orchard Beach.  There is a great dog park about 1/2 blocks down the street, so Tom will take the dogs there before dinner.

Saturday, 9/26/15.  Mom decided to stay back with the dogs, so Tom and I headed out north to Booth Bay and the city of Bath, Maine.  We drove to Booth Bay, which is north of Portland.  We took the scenic drive around two of the peninsulas.  The summer homes were beautiful, but certainly NOT mansions, just a very nice place to be in the summer.  With the exception of the coastline, the inside of the peninsulas are densely forested.    Here are more pictures of the coastline, and some lobster traps.

Booth Bay 1

Booth Bay 2

Lobster Traps

That is it for tonight. Tomorrow is a travelling day.  We are headed back north in the state of New Hampshire.  We will be settling into a campground for 5 days while we tour the fall colors.  Because the summer is longer this year, the colors have not changed as they normally do.  Hope we have good luck there!