Mount Desert’s Quiet Side

We wake way too early to be ready for a 10:00 a.m. departure from Northeast Harbor for our cruise around Mount Desert’s southern harbors and up into Some’s Sound.  The only thing I know about this cruise is that it is at the long end of what is considered the quiet side of Acadia. And every time we visit this part of Maine, I continue to call it Mount Dez-ert (as in a barren place) while the correct pronunciation is Mount Di-zurt (as in dessert, i.e., cookie or pie).  I can’t help myself, calling this place a dessert seems wrong.  Michael continually corrects me, laughing at my stubbornness to call it what it isn’t.  However, it isn’t a dessert either.  Maybe I’ll just settle for calling the whole thing Acadia.

Northeast Harbor

Cutting across a corner of the old and quaint village of Northeast Harbor to get to the dock where our tour boat awaits, we hope that the GPS really does know the way.

When we finally arrive at our destination, I am speechless.  Is this Maine?  It looks brand new—if it is possible for a harbor to look that way—no working lobster boats. No lobster traps stacked in artistic disarray—no worn, torn and tattered, docks. There are only long, wide sloping lawns of bright green edging the sidewalks that border the water. The grass is neatly trimmed; everything has crisp edges and velvet centers.  

Heading toward the water to board the tour boat, I begin to understand my surroundings.  I get a closer look at the pleasure boats gracing the harbor.  It appears the average size might be somewhere around eighty to ninety feet in length.  

I am face to face with the HAVES vs the HAVE NOTS. There are the well off.  The well-heeled. The tony. The rich. The super-rich.  The mega-rich. The uber-rich.  Northeast Harbor approaches the end of that list.  I can’t even be jealous.  Just in awe—well, a little jealous.

A Few of Michael’s Favorite Things

Cute Girls, Sailboats (honestly they don’t have to be mega sized),  Hinkley Boats, and Lighthouses

Bear Island Lighthouse & Seal Harbor

We pass by Bear Island Lighthouse and Seal Harbor.  If the rich come to play at Northeast Harbor, they come to stay at Seal Harbor—at least for a week or two.  The summer cottages are the size of small hotels—barely visible from the ocean, totally obscured from the road. 

Cranberry Island

Our destination is Islesford, a 200-year-old fishing village on Little Cranberry Island.  The island is charming, not storybook charming like Monhegan, but my grandmother’s farm charming.  We are told by our well informed national park guide that the thing to do while we are here is to walk up the hill to the general store and have some gingerbread and coffee. Every passenger on the boat heads up the hill, so we take our time, letting others get ahead of us, hoping there will be no line at the end of our ten-minute hike.

Un-gingered Gingerbread

We arrive at the general store so late that it looks like there is no gingerbread left at all.  The only thing I see in the small glass case are enormous slices of a white coffeemaker. I am very disappointed. The best gingerbread I ever had was in Maine, more decades ago than I care to count. I was ready for more.

“Oh, you’re out of gingerbread,” I say. 

“Not at all,” is the response as I am served a huge piece of the white cake with hot coffee to wash it all down.

Mike and I each have a slice—me sitting, him standing on the porch—munching and sipping.  As we get ready to leave, I take my trash inside looking for an appropriate receptacle, and ask if they use fresh ginger in their gingerbread—because as I said, it is white.

“There is no ginger in it,” I’m told.

Oh!

Well, I guess if you can pronounce desert, dessert, you might as well call white coffeecake gingerbread.

On our way out of the general store, slash post office, I meet a charming rusticator from California.  She is picking up her mail and has been summering in Islesford forever. As she climbs into her island transportation, a super spiffy little golf cart, she tells me she raised her boys here during summer vacations; but now that they are grown, all they want to do is stay in California and surf. 

I understand her problem. However, California in the winter and Maine in the summer? I should have such a problem.

White Gingerbread

2 cups of sugar
2 teaspoons nutmeg
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
4 cups flour
1 cup oil (canola or corn oil)
1 1/3 cups buttermilk
½ cup of sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease a 15″ x 10″ x 1″ cookie sheet. Whisk together first five ingredients. Stir in oil and buttermilk and spread mixture in cookie sheet, sprinkling top with about 1/2 cup white sugar. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Top will be light brown, toothpick will come out clean.

If you want to take your car onto Little Cranberry Island, you have to hire a barge to push it there…

8/27/2014 4:30:53 PM