AB1 Tour 2014 - Week 18 - Bar Harbor, MA

In the northeast, we seem to be seeing or hearing the term “wicked” everywhere.  There’s “wicked ale,” “wicked good lobster,” even “a wicked good guy.”  Our week in Maine went “wicked fast.”  On a “wicked nice day,” we took our “wicked walk.”  After an evening at the theatre, we relaxed with some “wicked cocktails” while playing croquet and hitting through some “sticky wicked wickets.”      WHICKEDLY WHEW!      Sunday, July 27, was our travel day, but we were going to break it up a little this time.  We scheduled a breakfast get-together with yet another Carleton College 1973 classmate, Bill Greenberg, who has a summer place nearby.  As usual, it was a real revelation.     I didn’t know Bill all that well at Carleton, but I’ve come to consider him a friend due to the quintannual (five-year) reunions the college stages.  2018 will be our 45th  ...      … I CAN NOT BE THAT OLD!      Bill lives outside of Boston in Belmont, but he and his wife have a summer place in Cape Elizabeth, ME, so we met up at a breakfast nook about 20 minutes from their house and just off the route to our next stop, Bar Harbor, ME (actually “Harrington,” but who’s ever heard of that?).      So on this day all these many years later, I finally discovered that Bill and I WENT TO THE SAME GRADE SCHOOL!!  How can that be?  Well, it was Eliot Grade School in St. Louis Park, MN, only he was in kindergarten while I was in first grade.  I probably didn’t know him cause I only hung around the cool first-graders, you know, the ones who had graduated from eating paste.      Bill caught up to me by the time we got to college.  Over a healthy breakfast of sausage, eggs, and cheese (all protein), I found out that after he got his degree in biology from Carleton, he went to the University of California-Berkeley (where all good hippies of that era went) to get his doctorate in computer science and engineering.      Good timing on getting into computers, Bill.  I was investing heavily in VCR’s at the same time knowing full well they’d be a necessity for everyone well into the 21st century.      Bill worked computers at M.I.T. for years and now, he’s retired.  Like us, he’s taken up a new vocation.  No, he’s not a vagabond world traveler like yours truly.  He went back to school and became … a pastry chef.  Next reunion, I’m expecting from Bill a lot of cupcakes … sugar-free, of course.      Our RV in the campground in Harrington was incredible, especially if you ask Diedre Kaye.  Sure, it had no cable TV, the nearby tenters partied late every night, and the gnats were the size of footballs.  But it did have a great view looking right out over the ocean inlet, and you could pick wild raspberries practically right out your door.  But here’s the thing that put them over the top as far as great campgrounds go:      THEY DELIVERED LOW-PRICED, ALREADY STEAMED, VERRRRY FRESH LOBSTERS RIGHT TO YOUR RV!!!!      I think Diedre thought she had died and gone to “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives” heaven.     Tonight we’re having lobster dinner #1.  While we enjoy ourselves silly slopping melted butter all over the place, you all can talk amongst yourselves.  Here’s a little lobster trivia to get you started: -Maine lobster men catch and sell 55-60 million pounds of lobsters each year; -it takes a lobster 5-7 years to reach its legal size; in that time, they shed their shells 25-27 times; -a female lobster will bear 6,000-100,000 eggs; -there are more than 7,000 Maine lobster fishermen; they put out over three-million traps; -in the mid 1800’s, lobster was considered only good enough to use as a fertilizer or to feed the hired help or to prison inmates.  You probably wanted to be a felon in Maine back then so that you could be served daily what was then referred to as “trash fish.” -lobsters are not red; they’re a green-yellow in nature.  They only turn red after being cooked.  “Blue” is the rarest color lobster; only about one in two-million lobsters is blue; -the largest lobster ever caught was off Nova Scotia and weighed 44 pounds.  It was believed to be more than 100 years old; -despite the fact that they have 20,000 “eyes,” they have terrible eyesight.  They sense movement with their antenna.      And there’s your “Lobster 101” for today.  I hope you took good notes; there’ll be a test Friday.      We enacted our usual Monday rules which require little or no physical exertion on either of our parts.  The highlight of the day was making our way into town to see the Tom Cruise movie “The Edge of Tomorrow” at the tiny, single-screen, 1937 movie theater.  Kind of smelled like it hadn’t been cleaned since late 1938, but regardless, we had a good time.     Rallying ourselves the next morning, we made our way into the lovely little town of Bar Harbor.  Skimping as we do, we found free parking about three blocks off the center of the downtown action.  The extra walking does us good, so we never mind parking on the outskirts of these towns.      Our first stop was a visit with “The Custard Nazi” at Adelmann’s Deli & Grill (I told you two weeks ago that everything in my life can be traced back to a “Seinfeld” episode).  Custard, as I have come to convince Diedre the Food Sheriff, is OK for me because the eggs they put in it counteract any effects of the sugar.      IT COULD HAPPEN!      So as is her habit, she questioned the uninformed sales-girl about the custard and whether or not it “really” had any eggs in it.  Like a shot, the owner raced out from the kitchen and began giving my sturdy wife a hard time.  His bold protection of his product quickly convinced our gal that this, indeed, was custard.  I remained in the background quickly downing my serving just in case Diedre did find it to be “faux-custard.”  I’m no dummy …. usually.        Pressing my luck a bit, I “accidentally” stumbled into The Chocolate Moose store.  And I was on a hot streak … they had my absolute favorite (just in case you’re wondering what to get me for my birthday, Christmas, or St. Swithin’s Day), dark-chocolate covered, sugar-free toffee.  I was allowed to purchase six pieces by the ever-more benevolent Food Sheriff. Now on “carb-death-watch,” we were inspired to walk the won-derfully scenic, down-town Bar Harbor Shore Path.  It was built in 1880 and had an easement grandfathered in so that no future businesses or homes could keep it from the public’s use.  That made it particularly nice when the trail went right through some older woman’s living room before taking a left at the kitchen.   Lunch was at the wonderful “Pat’s Pizza,” especially significant since “Pat” is the name Diedre used to go by during her years on the run from the law.  For a while, she combined the two names and went by “Padiedre,” a name used by well over three people.  At Pat’s Pizza, Padiedre had her dream come true … no, not the one about Brad Pitt and the llama named “Ernie.”  Today she would have her first ever “lobster”pizza.  She truly was in “DD&D” heaven. As if that culinary cloud-nine wasn’t enough, we then made our way over to “Bar Harbor Brewing Company & Tasting Room” for, what else?  Some beer tasting.  At Diedre’s insistence, I fireman-carried her out of there at closing so we could make it to a vitally important appointment back at base camp.  It was, of course …      … LOBSTER DINNER #2!      The next morning, although technically a “recovery” day, still necessitated a three-mile walk for 1) my streak, and 2) Diedre’s Grand Canyon training.  So, we headed to Machias, ME.  “Machias” is Native American for “bad little falls,” so that’s where we thought we would hike.     As it turned out, Bad Little Falls Park was just the falls, scenic though they were, with no real hiking area, so after a quick look-see, we headed to Roque Bluffs State Park for our delayed-hike.  This was a just-OK, mostly forested park with little view of the ocean’s inlet.  DK immediately flashed back to her college days and her bad “acid trip” to Oz.  She became irrationally fearful of lions and tigers and bears.  All she could say was, “Oh my!”  So taking it unto myself as the “alleged” man in this duo, I began channeling “The Karate Kid,” assuming the super-aggressive “crane kick” pose, an almost indefensible attack position (remember, I said “almost”).  Sure enough, that class of second-graders who passed by cut us a wide berth.     We were back on the road the next day for an extensive search of northern Maine, at least that part still abutting the ocean.  We started just a mile away with a visit to “Wild Blueberry Land,” home to all things blueberry.   Of course, their chef convinced Diedre to try a small slice of his wonderful blueberry pie (of which I was entitled, by binding legal document, to have a bite).  I think this is the place that inspired Roald Dahl to have one of his kids turn into a giant blueberry in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”  (I’ll need Diedre to verify that I know what I’m talking about here, because I don’t.)      OK, one of my “things” is to see famous, yet somewhat inane, sites, either historically or naturally significant.  That’s why I dragged poor Diedre to Eastport, ME, on Moose Island, where we would be able to catch a glimpse of “Old Sow.”  No, that’s not the name of the 1972 St. Olaf “College” Homecoming Queen.  Old Sow is the 2nd biggest whirlpool in the world.  The problem was, nobody in Eastport seemed to know where it was.  One shop gal had lived there all her life (so far) and had never seen it.  COME ON!  Haven’t you people ever had all-night keg parties at weird places back in high school?!      Finally, we found one guy hanging up his laundry who knew about Old Sow.      “It’s no big whoop,“ he said.  “It’s just where the tides cross at a certain time of the day.”      Of course, he and everyone else were not aware of when that would be.  So what could I expect from a guy hanging out his laundry?     Maybe we were making a bigger deal about this than it was.  We looked out where we figured it should be, noted the light currents SLIGHTLY swirling, and then moved on for our tour of downtown Mooseport on East Island … OK, switch the “moose” with the “east.”  The highlight of this little, non-descript town (see, I can refer to a small town using an adjective other than “lovely”) was a statue of a fisherman.  Unfortunately, it was not a nod to the city’s epic seafaring past.  No, it had actually been built in 2001 for Fox TV’s mini-series “Murder in Small Town X.”         Really?      Moving on.      We made it over one town for a wonderful seaside lunch at the Water Street Tavern in Lubec, ME, the eastern-most city in the country.  Eating on the bay, you could see a lot of islands … at least you could when we started.  When we ordered, it was blue sky, sunny, crisp air, and sailboats all over the place.  By the time our meals were served, fog covered the bay completely.  You couldn’t see the islands or even the light house, which really kind of defeats the whole “light-up-the-bay-so-the-ships-don’t-crash-on-the-rocks” scheme of things.  But when I finished my meal, it was the “blue sky, sunny, crisp air, sailboats” thing again.  By the time I paid the bill, you guessed it, the fog was back.  This was at like three in the afternoon.  Go figure.      Our Lubec town walk was a step up from Eastport … and I mean that literally.  How the heck does this guy step up into his house through this door?  We may have found Superman’s house; when he leaves, he just flies out the front door.  Got to be hell on his secret identity.    Just for yucks, we did a little real estate search.  We were very close to buying this place as a summer cabin, but we disagreed with the seller: we wanted it repainted, while he wanted to burn it down.  Too bad, because this would have been the eastern-most dumpy cabin in the country.  Just like the Kennedy assassination or 9-11, you probably remember where you were and what you were doing on this day at 4:44 p.m. and 32 seconds, EDT.  In Lubec, that was the moment that Diedre Kaye was the eastern most person on U.S. soil in this entire country of some 300-million people.  How about that?   To celebrate, we went to the easternmost gift shop where I had a western omelette.      So, to summarize our day, we went as far north in Maine as you could go while still being next to the ocean, saw no visible second biggest whirlpool in the country, and had no access to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s summer home in Campobello, a U.S. president no less, since, unbeknownst to us, it was across the river in Canada and we didn’t think we’d need passports on this year’s trip, except for maybe parts of New Jersey.  I mean, on the U.S. side alone, there were 11 customs agents, four with sub-machine guns, warily eyeing us as potential AARP-Card carrying terrorists, and everyone was subjected to full-body searches.  You know how ticklish I am.  Meanwhile on the Canadian side, there were two guys in flannel shirts playing checkers waving any and all in with barely a nod.   And unlike our visit to Key West, FL, and the southernmost point in the continental country, there was no actual signage labeling Mooseport … uh, Eastport as the easternmost point in the country.  They just told us it was.      Yeah?      Forget it.  We’re going home for cocktails and a game of gin-rummy.  I don’t know if lobster will be involved tonight.    OK, Friday, August 1, was our big day of the week, probably our biggest day in Maine.  Today we would be visiting Acadia (not “AR-cadia”) National Park on Mount Desert Island as so designated by Congress in 1919.  Opting against tours and crowded buses, we took Zippy on a joyful daylong drive/stop-and-look on the 20-mile long “Park Loop Road.”  Here were the day’s highlights:      -a visit to the parks only sand beach which some genius named “Sand Beach”; -a thorough soaking at “Thunder Hole,” a narrow granite channel where air gets trapped and then the irresistible tides cause a big explosion of surf;  -hiking to “Otter Cliffs,” the 100’ high pink granite buttresses which seem to rise straight out of the water;  -a physically exhausting half-trip up “The Beehive,” a 520’ high mountain with a honeycombed eastern face.  We doggedly climbed until we came upon “The Sign of Death.”  We then opted to retreat and live to climb another day;  -a nice, yet expensive, lunch (with the obligatory “Obaid Popovers”) at Jordan Pond and its view of “The Bubbles.”  Most women say these two mountains look like bubbles.  Most guys say they look like something else.  It’s no wonder they’re the most popular mountains in the state for guys to climb;  -and finally, Cadillac Mountain, the high point in the park at 1,530’.  In actuality, it’s the tallest mountain on the Atlantic coast north of Brazil.  It’s top is a big, bald granite dome, much like Chuck Pappas’s (inside Minnesota joke) from which you can see most of Maine (also much like Chuck Pappas).  All I could say while arriving at the summit was, “TOP OF THE WORLD, MA!  TOP OF THE WORLD!”     We made one last stop to bid adieu to Bar Harbor.  We visited the Internet Café as suggested by fellow Arizona thespian, par-extraordinare Petey Swartz.  Petey, a waitress there wants to know when you’re going to pay your bar-tab.     The West End Drug on Main Street, right out of my youth, has an actual 1950’s soda-fountain.  To reminisce, we tore off the top of the paper sleeved straws and blew them at the ceiling.  As like when we were kids, that got us thrown out of the place.      Our last stop entailed Diedre getting her “Growler” jug filled with beer at the Bar Harbor Brewing Company & Tasting Room.      Guess what kind?      You had to know it would be “Wicked Ale.”      Heading back to where we parked Zippy, I felt a lot like I was in Dogpatch, USA, walking down Main Street with Mammy Yokum” and her jug of “rheumatiz’ medicine.”  Yes, Diedre finally found something she likes to kiss better than strange men … WICKED ALE!      So, it’s lobster dinner #3 tonight and then we’ll be on our way tomorrow to my trip highlight, Cooperstown, NY, by way of Concord, NH.      I know, I know, you can hardly wait.