Chris and I (Michele) have had this Maine trip planned for almost 2 years, so to say we were excited is an understatement. When I tell people I had never been to Maine, they look at me with a confused look and say “aren’t you from New York?”. Well, yeah, but my family always vacationed where it was warmer. We got super lucky and happened to be traveling to where it was cooler during the hottest week of the summer here in North Carolina.

We traveled with Chris’ family, most of whom vacation in Maine annually, so we had great travel guides! After we left the airport, before we even got to our cottage, we stopped at one of MANY little roadside lobster eating spots. If you’ve never been to Maine, these small restaurants are everywhere. You can’t go more than a half mile without seeing one.

We finally arrived (after 3 stops to eat in a 2 hour trip) to our quaint cottage in a small town near Rockland. The cottage itself is over 100 years old, and barely slept 4 of us and a baby! Several of the photos further down in the post are taken from right outside the cottage overlooking the water. We enjoyed lots of bonfires, cooking weenies over the fire and s’mores. There was no TV or air conditioning so some of us felt like they were camping (I’m looking at you, Jenn), the rest of us loved it. A break from reality.

Below is the whole fam on the beach at the cottage. The tide is about 2/3 of the way in in the next few photos. When it’s all the way in the rocks and beach are completely gone, and when it’s all the way out all of the rocks are completely out of the water. It’s a 10-12 foot difference, and it never ceased to amaze us at the amount of water that comes in and out.

Owls Head, Maine was right down the road from us and we spent part of a day exploring Owls Head State Park as well as a local lobster company.

Camden has a creek/river that runs right through the downtown area in to the Camden harbor. The buildings are built right over top of it!

One of my absolutely favorite parts of the trip was the lobstering trips. There is a local Lobsterman, Neil, who keeps his boat in the same cove that we stayed in. He took Chris and Dave out to get our dinner. I went out another day to photograph Neil and Mike pulling traps, banding the lobster, going to market and learning as much as I could about lobstering. Those photographs are going to be a separate blog post (coming soon!). Neil told me that Chris and Dave were a big help, but I’m not sure exactly how true that is 😉

The Marshall Point Lighthouse – this is the lighthouse that appears in Forest Gump!

Jenn, Dave, Chris and I took a day trip via ferry to Monhegan Island. The island is 10 miles from the mainland and has roughly 70 year round inhabitants. Many artists live or travel there so I was super excited about this trip. Monhegan is just under 2 miles long and a mile wide and there are no cars, grocery stores and very few restaurants. If you need to get away, this is where you go. We grabbed a bite to eat when we arrived and then started hiking. When we saw a sign for a brewery we thought it was a mirage. But sure enough, we found Monhegan Brewing Company and stopped for in a beer. In hindsight, this may have been a mistake, because when we got to the part in the trail where we could turn around and go back the easy way or continue on to a  “difficult” trail, we thought the difficult trail sounded fun (eye roll). In the end, the difficult trail gave us some gorgeous views and none of us fell off the cliff, broke our flip flops or got poison ivy. Whew.

The image on the left was when we first started hiking and when we finished hiking (about 3 hours later) is the image on the right. I’m not sure who accomplished more, him or us.

The mighty sea glass hunters. Looking for sea glass is sort of addicting and we knew that there was a lot of it on Monhegan Island, so we set out on a mission.

The fog in Maine is pretty amazing. It comes and goes almost as fast as you can blink and also makes for some pretty awesome photos!