Sunset on Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park, Mount Desert Island, Maine
I’m writing my last post for Mark in Maine and my first post for Nick Up North as a slow-moving thunderstorm rolls off Lake Superior and drops maybe an inch or two of rain on our quiet Duluth neighborhood.
I kind of missed thunderstorms.
Maine doesn’t really get thunderstorms. Sure, they get rain, wind and plenty of rough weather, but we rarely heard any thunder and saw no lightning during our three years in Bangor. Hey, if you gotta have a wet and rainy day, why not add a little drama with loud explosions and a crazy light show, right?
But this post isn’t about missing the midwest.
Or maybe it is.
On Tuesday night, we drove across town to a coffee shop called Beaners in West Duluth. The place was hosting a week of live music and Jen knew one of the performers, a singer/songwriter named Emily Haavik. After the show, we chatted with Emily as people filed out the door and headed home.
“So are you going to miss Maine?” she asked.
“Of course,” I said. “We made a lot of friends there and it was such a great place to explore. So beautiful. The ocean. Acadia. All the little towns. We loved it.”
Emily said she had never been to Maine, but wanted to visit someday – a common response from people I meet in the Northland. Maybe because the two places are very similar: Rugged, mostly empty timber lands cling to the rocky cliffs over a massive, foreboding body of water. Hearty, independent people who know how to hunt for food and drive a snow plow.
Yes, Minnesotans appreciate Maine and might want to visit the place someday but when it’s time for a winter vacation, most forget about lobster and book tickets to the beach in San Diego.
Which is why Jen and I feel fortunate about our Maine experience. A job took us to Vacationland. We weren’t tourists passing through on a sightseeing bus. We had to shovel out after a snow storm. We bought milk at a corner grocery. We paid water bills and could drive to the Bass Harbor lighthouse without consulting a map. Sometimes it felt like we were ex-pats living in Paris circa 1927 – except we had to eat bland sausage pizza instead of confit de canard.
Yes, we got to climb Cadillac Mountain, hike the Gulf of Maine shoreline, eat seafood right off the boat, ski the carriage trails AND we got to sleep in our own bed at night.
But Maine is a long way from home: 1,800 miles to be exact. After awhile you miss the midwest. You miss the birthday parties, the home team, the corn on the cob, the Grain Belt. Our last three Thanksgivings have been in New York, Montreal and Boston. I’m not complaining. It’s just time for a turkey dinner.
Duluth has a little bit of that Conde Nast Traveler allure to it, as well. The city is undergoing a transformation from gritty rust belt town to regional vacation mecca. The steep mountain bike trails, the shoreline strolls, the ocean-going ore boats, the craft beer tap rooms and, of course, that vast, ever-changing, fresh water wonder called Superior. I’m looking forward to exploring the north shore with my favorite person in the whole world, my smart and lovely wife, Jen.
Bring on the thunder.
Editor’s note: Keep following Mark in his new blog: NickUpNorth
West Penobscot Bay, Rockport, Maine.
Jen and I returned to Minnesota last week and things have slowed down enough to look back at pictures from our last six months in Maine. Mark in Maine readers can get one last look at the vast beauty, historic charm and quirky color that dominates this great state. Enjoy
Jen cross-country skiing. Acadia National Park
Maine battled through one of the toughest winters on record but it wasn’t enough to stop Jen and I from getting to Acadia National Park (twice!) for some amazing cross-country skiing.
I guess rough winters make for great skiing.
That’s Jen rockin’ down the Upper Hadlock Loop trail.
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House. Hartland, Maine
Hartland, population 1,700, sits right in the middle of Maine. A sprawling tannery straddles the Sebasticook River as it roars through town. The business looks just open enough to keep the place alive.
I photographed this empty house as friends bought an old leather sample book from a former tannery employee down the street. Come to think of it, the guy may have just given it to them.
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19th Century map of Bangor, Maine
Our old neighborhood!
A detail from a framed map hanging at the Bangor Historical Society‘s Thomas A. Hill House Museum shows where Jen and I lived for the last three years.
Our house was on the corner of Mill Lane and Ohio Street, the road that runs horizontally through the picture. Sometime after this map was made, Mill Lane was dead ended and its name was changed to Holland Street. The covered bridge and mills along the Kenduskeag Street are long gone.
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Bathroom poster. Chase’s Daily. Belfast, Maine
Chase’s Daily was one of our favorite restaurants in Maine.
A hip vegetarian restaurant with odd hours, a cool staff and a farmer’s market in back on weekends.
Oh, and killer cinnamon rolls.
The restaurant always showed wonderful work from local artists – even in the bathroom.
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Bakery. Biddeford, Maine
Never made it inside this place but if the donuts were as good as the sign we might have moved to Biddeford…
Mill District. Biddeford, Maine.
And I could have worked at the Pepperell textile mill downtown, it employed 10,000 people in 1900.
Oh wait, the last bit of the mill closed for good in 2009.
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Jen & Jen at the beach, Kennebunk, Maine
We celebrated JenFest a little early this year. The Jens both have birthdays in November but the party started early during a glorious Labor Day weekend on the beach at Kennebunk.
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Mount Kineo, Moosehead Lake, Maine
We heard a ferry-boat hauled hikers and golfers to Mount Kineo State Park, an island on Moosehead Lake. We didn’t know it would be a pontoon boat with a zip up shell.
It made for a rough boat ride but a fantastic hike.
Cleaning up in the Mustard Room.
(Photo by Jennifer Moore)
We said goodbye to our ketchup & mustard rooms.
That’s what we called our Bangor dining room and living room. The deep red and sorry yellow on the walls looked like they came out of a plastic bottle with a resealable cap. A home designer might call it bold. We just called it funny.
Before we moved into the place three years ago, the property manager decided to add a fresh coat of paint to the lower level. The handy man boasted to me one day that he painted the two rooms with a new product that combines the primer and color in one can.
“It was something new. You could do it all in just one coat,” he said. “I think it looks pretty good.”
“OK…”
Anyway, the boxers and movers took over the ketchup & mustard rooms during the last 48 hours and put everything we own into a huge truck.
Then we had to clean, sweep & mop.
With the rugs rolled up and hauled away, we rediscovered the “unique” hardwood floors in the ketchup & mustard rooms. It was one of our first impressions that will remain a great memory of our time in Maine.
Who knows when, but sometime in the history of 355 Ohio Street (maybe the Great Depression?), it was decided to refinish the living and dining room floors. The beautiful 19th Century hardwood had gone from shiny, grain-streaked pine to a crusty, scuffed and blotched mess of a floor.
Time to sand the floors down and add a few coats of poly, right?
Sort of.
Before we moved in, Jen and I stopped at 355 Ohio. We didn’t have the keys yet and had rented the place sight unseen. We were eager to get a look at our new home. Peering in the windows, this is what we saw: the outer edge of the floors were sanded and clean. The middle was still a pea soup color with more than 100 years of scratches, scuffs and stains.
“What?!” said Jen. “Look at those floors!”
Somewhere down the line, money was saved on a home improvement project: Just sand and refinish around the edges, the carpet will cover up the rest.
It was our first lesson in the thrifty and creative ways of many real Mainers.
As I put the finishing touches on our last day cleaning, I handed Jen my camera phone.
I swept the sanded and dirty part of the floor. Jen snapped a picture.
There we stood in the empty mustard room.
Just a couple of hot dogs.
First Congregational Church.
East Machias, Maine
This church was so stunning I had to use it in my final installment of “Backroads Country Churches of Maine.”
The First Congregational Church is located in East Machias at the northeastern tip of Maine. The church is on a hill high above Hwy. 1 and about a mile or two from Machias Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Not exactly a “country church.”
Still East Machias is a small river town of 1,300. A 10-minute drive north features plenty of Maine country: forest, lakes, quarries, blueberry barons and small farms.
The country folk of Washington County built this church big, grand and strong and then covered it in white paint to make it look like a snow castle.
And believe me, a church on a slip of land between the mighty Atlantic Ocean and the endless Maine forest needs to be as strong as a castle. That way you know it will be there every Sunday.
Mark in Maine 