Ah-yup! We're up in Maine!

After we left Portsmouth, NH we crossed the Piscataqua River into Maine, we knew we had to quickly do two things--get over to the Atlantic Ocean and see a lighthouse and find a seafood joint and have  a lobster roll!

We solved the first problem in York with a drive to Nubble Light, officially known as the 1879 Cape Neddick light. This is one of the most photographed lighthouses in Maine and is situated on a tiny island just off the point.  It's a pretty and very popular location but it was windy and chilly. It was certainly worth seeing!

View of York peninsula

We drove on to our campground for the night in Old Orchard Beach, another old beach resort town with a huge very popular amusement park in town..  Then we drove about a mile back to a lobster pound and finally, had our 2nd priority--a lobster roll!  For the uninitiated, a lobster roll is composed of either a hot dog bun or a thick slice of bread filled with large pieces of lobster claw meat and dressed with mayonnaise, cole slaw and french fries.  They are incredibly delicious, but it seems the price has gone up since our last trip and now $16.95 seems to be the going price.

The Pier and Boardwalk in Old Orchard Beach

Some of the houses in the York area give you a nose bleed, but they are beautiful!

The rugged Maine Coast

The rocks look like they are petrified wood

The next day, we were on our way to visit our friends Mike and Suzanne at their house in Gorham, ME, a Portland suburb. They live in the Washington Land Yacht Harbor, where we live in Olympia, WA and are in the process of selling this home in Maine.  We love visiting Maine but no way could we survive the winters!! 
Don't you just love friends that have 2-30 amp power receptacles in their driveway--one for their Airstream trailer and one for our Sprinter!!  We spent 3 enjoyable days with them, probably totally disrupting their packing and painting efforts!  And we went out to dinner all 3 nights -- shrimp rolls--wow! at Ken's Seafood; Mexican at Margarita's downtown on the waterfront--excelente!; and  fish and chips and shrimp dinner at Susan's, a great seafood joint!

On 6/11 after dinner, Mike and Suzanne took us on a driving tour of the Promenade neighborhood high on a hill.  Many, many beautiful large houses of all architectural styles. Then the next day, they drove us on the grand Portland  lighthouse tour!  We saw Two Lights, the famous Portland Head Light, Spring Point Ledge Light and Bug Light.

 Top: Bug Light, Spring Point Ledge Light--                                                                                                                                          Middle:One of the Two Lights, Portland Head Light                                                                                                          Bottom: Other Two Light, Tower of Portland Head

In addition, we stopped at the super Liberty Ship Memorial, which is a series of history tablets and photographs about Liberty Ships built in Portland during World War II inside of a steel beam armature that is like the shape and size of a real Liberty Ship. 

We drove to the Portland waterfront again on the day we left to go to the Chamber of Commerce in search of a walking tour guide of the beautiful old homes of the Promenade area of Portland and the old commercial buildings of downtown Portland.  They have 4 guides for 4 different neighborhoods (there really is that many architecturally interesting old buildings and homes in Portland!) with beautiful drawings; we bought two walking tour guides, the Promenade and the Waterfront,  for use when we return to Portland.

Waterpower for an old mill

It was our appointed day to drive to Acadia National Park, Maine's jewel, and only full National Park on the East Coast, not counting National Historic Parks and National Seashores.  It was raining when we left but really pouring by the time we reached Bath, ME.  We stopped at the Visitor Center hoping there was a tour of the Bath Iron Works shipyard, where they build fine U.S. Navy destroyers. The yard is just over the fence from the Visitor Center!  Unfortunately not any more--security!  We decided to abort going to Acadia after checking the weather report on our cell phone and drove to a nearby campground in Phippsburg near the ocean.  We got over 3 inches of rain and flash flood warnings were up--not good!  We were worried about getting stuck in mud in the campground but it was more sandy than muddy and no problem next morning.

Whimsical wind vane sculpture

The weather was expected to clear up and become warm and sunny on Saturday 6/14 for 3-4 days so we decided to go to one of our bucket list destinations--Quebec City in Canada-- first and afterwards come back to Acadia.  And that's what we did!