Today we were driving around Maine chaing pretty lighthouses and lobsters – it’s just the done thing up here apparently. Finally the weather turned to be a bit more what we were expecting when we booked for this time of year – nearly 10C and sunny. I can’t get over the snow on the ground everywhere, it hasn’t snowed here for weeks, but there are areas that are shaded that don’t get warm enough to thaw it.
I was very amused to see a Park Ranger adjusting the fire danger sign at a visitors centre off the higway out of Portsmouth… I was looking around at all the snow on the ground, and we are rugged up in jackets and scarves, and it’s the first day we’ve seen the sun in over a week, and here he was setting the fire danger to ‘High’. Seemed absurd, but I guess they know how to read their conditions.
We found the Nubble Light House which was much smaller than I was expecting. Most of the lighthouses I have seen back home are enormous but this was just a cute little lighthouse sticking out on a point.
The sea was something to watch, the colour of the water was spectacular and the surf was really violent. I don’t think you can really capture how aggressively the waves were beating the coastline, and if this is what it looks like on a beautiful calm day, I can imagine it gets pretty scary up here during storm season.
Mr K observed that people must really bloody love their seafood to risk going out in all that to get it. Nubble Beach itself was a littel calmer, and had lots of empty car parks, so we figure it is probably a very popular spot during the warmer months.
Again with the frozen ponds, though I am beginning to wonder if all these ‘ponds’ we are seeing are natural water courses or whether they are spaces where water has run off from melting snow and then refrozen before it’s had a chance to drain away properly!
Went past this quaint little art studio making wind chimes… they were moving a lot in the wind and looked really pretty, but I’m not so sure they are still wind chime if they sound either silent or clunky and terrible when they move are they? They reminded me of that movie ‘Twister’ where they visit the Aunt who makes all the wind ornaments for her garden (which is neither here nor there, but there you have it).
We were winding our way up to Cape Elizabeth which is a particualrly picturesque spot just south of Portland and we are told has amazing views and a lobster shack with lovely seafood. The Cape was really pretty, but again the sea looks cold and hostile. I just could not imagine being out there in that water. :/
We found the Cape Elizabeth Lobster Shack easily enough, it is literally the only business out here on the point. They have an huge outdoor eating area with about 30 picnic benches that were decidedly empty on a day like today. You could tell by their ordering system that they are used to dealing with huge volumes of customers, so it must be a very popular spot. The speciaility of the house is fried clams apparently, so we had to try some of those.
As per usual, one meal like this is way too much food for one person and the fried clams were as good as they are reputed to be. 🙂
After lunch we had to head back to Portsmouth to take care of the dreaded packing… our Qantas flights gave us two pieces of luggage each to a total of some ridiculous amount of kilos that we can check. But on our internal flights with American Airlines we have only one piece each to a maximum of 23 kilos. Which really sucks. It totally puts a dampner on the whole shopping bit, we knew we were going to have this enormous allowance once we get to Vegas, but everything up to that point was “no, we can’t fit it in our luggage”. So lots of lovely things we could have taken home for the neices and nephews stayed where they were on the shelves – which is good for the wallet I guess (See? I am a silver linings sort of gal, after all!) But it did mean I was having to get very creative with our packing to make sure neither bag was over weight and we weren’t carrying too much on in cabin luggage! Packing can be a nightmare, but I have the Packing Gene and no doubt I will have the Tetris theme music stuck in my head for the rest of the day.
Once the packing was mostly sorted we went for another tootle around looking for one last lobster restaurant… back over the Piscataqua River into Maine we went. The bridge crossing over to Kittery is very cool, but hard to take photos of it as you are driving along.
In the end we found ourselves at a place called ‘The Oarhouse‘ (The ‘H’ is silent according to our waiter… though I think he means absent). It was a beautiful little restaurant and we just about had the place to ourselves, though in a few weeks time when the weather has warmed up, it is reservations weeks in advance to get into the place apparently.
The menu was very impressive, and I ordered the scallops wrapped in apple wood smoked bacon, which were wonderfully fresh and delicious.
And then, on John’s recommendation ordered the baked stuffed lobster… which came out looking like this – 
Just how hungry did you think I was John?!? OMG, that lobster was so big, I named him Frank and felt sure that Frank would defeat me. But it turned out, as with all the lobster goodness, it’s 80% presentation, 10% stuffing and about 10% meat! So did my best with Frank and admit, that nearly all the stuffing remained on the plate with a pile of empty shells. So good. Would definitely recommend this place for dinner if anyone is up this way.
And so ends our journey in New England… tomorrow off to Las Vegas where the weather should be a balmy 20-22C. Yay! 😀