The National Park Service calls Acadia the "crown jewel of the North Atlantic coast" (source.) During the first week of June this year, I traveled again with my family to Mount Desert Island, Maine to visit the Park, and I had such a great time.
I had been once, when I was a teenager, but I didn't appreciate it then- it was during a school break and I opted to stay in the motel catching up on homework. 🤓 Since transforming from the detail-obsessed, black-and-white still life drawer I was in high school, to the colorful nature painter you know today, I've developed more of an eye and an appreciation for the travels we had when I was a kid.
We stayed in an AirBNB in Bass Harbor, a village in Tremont, Maine, on the "Quiet Side" of Mount Desert Island (MDI.) The island is small enough that, despite being on the opposite end from most park areas and Bar Harbor, nothing was more than about half an hour away. Plus, we arrived just a few weeks before what is considered peak season on the island- meaning less people, but almost all the same experiences.
If you've seen three places from MDI, this view of the Bass Harbor Lighthouse is one of them. The others would likely be Thunder Hole and the Bubbles over Jordan Pond. For the record, I took this particular picture, and it's less than ten minutes from our rental cottage.
I kept a journal during our stay to recall what I did each day, and now I'm turning that and the roughly 1,700 photos I took into this blog post series for you. There will certainly be artwork in response to this trip for months- years?- to come. I want this writing to help you feel the connection I do to that artwork, and to maybe inspire you to take a trip of your own to this part of the world.
So with that, let's jump in, day-by-day, to the trip.
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Day 1: Saturday, May 31
This was a rainy driving day. Most of this day's writing will take place off of
Mount Desert Island, so skip to Part 2 if that's what you're here for.
I left my house in central New Hampshire around 9, stopping in Rochester NH for a smoothie and in Portland ME to stretch my legs and buy art supplies.
The Artist and Craftsmen Supply Company is hands-down the most expansive in-person selection for art supplies I've seen. I've described shopping there as like a candy store, or as slipping into a trance and waking up $200 later. They seriously have everything, for the child artist to the beginner, the expert and the extremely specialized.
My Artist and Craftsmen Supply haul. I'm going to toy with the Caran d'Ache Neocolor sticks, some odd-colored Stabilo pens, and an ultra-dark 12B Staedtler graphite pencil. I grabbed some 5x7 frames to try, some 5x7 and 4x6 birch panels to paint on, and two sheets of handmade watercolor paper. The brushes are possible longer-lasting alternatives to my favorite Princeton filbert I routinely destroy, and I grabbed some good erasers, an extra sharpener, and a cow. It totaled out to just over $120- not my most expensive A&C visit!
Next, I navigated to Orono, just north of Bangor. The GPS wanted me to go through Bangor anyway, instead of following Route 1, so I contacted my friend who lives in Orono ahead of time and we planned to meet for lunch. I'd never seen my GPS say something as wild as "For the next 132 miles, continue straight." That's what most of Maine is like, once you're away from the coast!
My friend and I met at Thai Orchid in the college town of Orono, where we talked for an hour or two over fried noodles. She was studying at New England College's Institute of Art and Design at the same time as I was, but we really met after I graduated and began working full-time at NEC's Danforth Library. She was still a student doing work-study there, and I became her supervisor. Now graduated, she works at UMaine's library circulation department, a similar position to my day job (but in a much larger library.) We talked about library things and art and being young adults newly in the "real world".
After we parted ways, I made a quick stop at Reny's in Bangor, a store found only in Maine that's like part Agway, part dollar store, and part surplus/salvage store. I like it because it was one of the nearby places I felt safe during a lone semester at Maine College of Art, during the lowest dip in my mental health. It's nostalgic for those escapes.
Finally, I set my GPS to the address for our AirBNB cottage in Bass Harbor. I drove for another hour and then some. The views as I approached and then boarded the island grew increasingly exciting. I wanted to pull over and photograph everything, but I wanted more to relax after a long day in the car. I turned a 5-hour drive into 9 and was ready for it to end!
The Red Maple Cottage in Bass Harbor, Maine. Photo by the property owners.
I arrived shortly before 6. My parents and grandma had arrived about 20 minutes before and showed me which room was mine. It had two twin beds, one of which would be occupied by my grandma during the 3 nights my sister and her boyfriend would be there. I brought in my things, unpacked clothes into drawers, and the four of us piled into my dad's car to get dinner together.
We chose to go to Governor's in Ellsworth, just back on the mainland. We chose it for its proximity to a grocery store. The food was alright, but they were out of the first two dishes I tried to order, and the service was a bit slow. We were most entertained by the model train making laps over our heads and the outrageous dessert menu.
Top: The model train at Governors', photographed by me. Below: the Federal Deficit from Governors' dessert menu, a $30 dish of every sweet thing ever, that's hopefully meant to be split.
We finally left, leftovers in hand that didn't end up getting eaten. We stopped at Shaw's and grabbed some food to use at the cottage during the week, then at the Dollar Tree so my mom could grab a coffee cup in a size she considered adequate. Then we returned to Bass Harbor and turned in for the night.