Leaving Searsport

It is so hard to believe, but it is almost time to leave A Cottage by the Sea, Searsport, and drive on to our next adventure in PEI.  This is a wonderful, charming, tiny town.  A real town, not just a tourist town, with a town dock, a town park, a museum, a grocery store, and a charming restaurant pub stuck in the middle of a row of red brick buildings along the short business district in the minuscule downtown area.  Appropriately named the Brickhouse it has the BEST fried clams anywhere, in any town along the coast of Maine.  And everything is within walking distance of the cottage.  

Captain A.V. Nickels Inn

Not the tourist magnet of Camden and Bar Harbor, it still has cottages to rent and two huge, beautiful inns.  The Captain A.V. Nickels Inn has a wonderful stately, elegant old restaurant, The Captain’s Table.  It also has a bar with views of the bay and a great outdoor deck with the same views.  Only open for dinner, the food is superlative, with steaks perfectly cooked to order, amazing smoked duck tacos, goat cheese crostini, and the most delicious, decadent fruit dessert imaginable, Strawberries Pernod, and I ordered it because I thought it was the healthy option.

Toziers

I love the locally owned, small-town grocery store, Toziers.   Ever since I went shopping one Saturday morning, and saw that one of the employees was able to bring his young head-banded-flower-adorned daughter to work with him while he stocked shelves, I vowed that they would get all of my grocery money while I lived here.

When the employee went in search of a small football I asked about, his young daughter and I had a lovely conversation.  She followed me down the aisle in search of her father and was quick to point out that there were other types of balls available for me to purchase, and picked out a very colorful round one for me to look at.  

“But they are boys,” I said, “and boys really like football.”

“Oh….”

She looked a tiny bit disappointed when I left with the wrong type of ball.

The Cottage by the Sea

The cottage — The Cottage by the Sea — has been a perfect summer haven; perfect view, perfect ambiance, perfect kitchen, perfectly located for exploring both north and south (or in Maine is it actually east and west?).  Nothing is further than an hour and a half away; well Red’s in Wiscasset and the Aquarium in Boothbay are a bit further, but that trip was made to entertain the kids, even though torture and ennui were the results of our best intentions.  

As I sit here typing, I look through a multi-paned window to a view of blue sky, scudding clouds high overhead, blue bay,  a sloping lawn of newly mown grass, a hedge of tall summer flowers, and large white columns surrounded by a wide wooden deck. The bay sparkles. The windows are open, a breeze is blowing, the sun is shining.  The only sounds I hear are the crickets singing, and the leaves rustling in the grove of towering trees that surround the property on three sides.

Lunch on the Porch

Mike sits on the screened-in porch off the living room reading a book. Soon I need to begin the packing process, but I delay, remembering sunny afternoons on that wooden porch sitting in an Adirondack chair sipping a Dark & Stormy while snacking on a late afternoon lunch.  Some of my favorite times during this month of August in 2014, were sitting on that porch with the sun on my face.  It is something we didn’t do often enough; the lure of the yet unseen tugging at us a bit too strongly.

I am still amazed that you can be so warm in the sun while the air can still feel cool.  A phenomenon that doesn’t happen in the humid heat of a Texas summer.  I love living in a house where you are able to open the windows to the world, day and night, with all of the sights, sounds, and smells of summer assaulting your senses.  It is akin to driving a convertible very slowly down a winding country lane; there are no air conditioners, and no glass bubbles to shut you away from life here. A dog barking.  Birds singing. The solid thwack of the screen door as it closes.  These are the sounds of summer that I will long remember.

Maine.  Finally.  A brilliant idea.

8/30/2014 5:10:52 AM