Travel & Destination Blog Posts

Before we head out to the coast, I have to prep my mind. I’m not one for driving, so the hour and a half or two hour trips are big deal. All it takes is some looking around online at all the fun places we’ll visit and see and I’m pretty much ready to go. And this time, it was to Freeport and Brunswick, Maine.

If you aren’t aware, Freeport, Maine is the home of L.L. Bean. There’s a huge Bean store right in the center of town as well as an outlet store that’s located in a shopping area about a block away. During this trip, we didn’t go into the outlet store, but we sure did visit the main one. I was surprised at how large it was and how much merchandise this company sells. I had no idea. I always though L.L. Bean sold primarily parkas and jeans. Nope. They also sell all sorts of hiking and hunting gear and snowshoes and just about everything else you would think of if you lived in the northeast. There wasn’t much I actually wanted because I already have everything I need, but believe me, I would have a field day in this place. There’s some really good stuff. Albeit expensive stuff, but good stuff nonetheless.

The trip took an hour and a half from our house, which wasn’t bad. It takes approximately an hour to get to 95 and then things went quickly from there. When we rolled into Freeport from 295, I was so pleasantly surprised. I was expecting a town full of just L.L. Bean, but what we saw was a town that contained many traditional white clapboard homes and inns. I loved the look of these buildings and I especially loved the size of the white pine trees surrounding them. They were huge and they were all over place. Both the buildings and the trees made the town quite traditional looking and inviting. I think we’ll head back soon for a more extended stay.

I took many photos during our time in Freeport, but I’ll try to trim them down for you. I would like to give you a glimpse inside L.L. Bean as well as some of what we saw around town. I will warn you that the pictures I took inside the store aren’t that great because I was attempting to be stealth. It didn’t seem like shoppers appreciated having their photos taken, so I sort of whipped my camera out, took a shot and then hid it again. I think you’ll get the idea though. Okay, let’s go.

This is a corner of the store. The main entrance is just to the right of this area. Straight ahead is a window display for Christmas.

Directly across the street from the Bean store was Linda Bean’s Maine Kitchen & Topside Tavern. This is a restaurant that all the tourists were eating in.

If you aren’t one for dead animals all over the place, you might not want to visit this store. The first thing we noticed were stuffed moose heads and bears pretty much all over the place. While it makes for an interesting landscape, it can be surprising if unexpected. I enjoyed taking photos of them because, apparently, I don’t get to see much wildlife in the actual outdoors. Everything has been avoiding me.

Here’s a moose head for you. There are more perished animals to come later on.

And here are a few random shots of the inside of the store. It was diverse and fun to explore.

Oh wait. What’s this? That’s right, it’s stuffed bison, deer and bear!

There were two very cool parts of the store. One of them was the huge aquarium they had set up. Inside of it were a few different types of river fish. Here are some photos of that. I’ll get to the second cool thing in a bit.

After we walked past the aquarium, I saw a Christmas tree in the distance. I said to myself, “Oh look, a regular old Christmas tree.” It wasn’t until we got closer did I notice there were pocket knives hanging all over it. If there’s one way to make an ordinary Christmas tree extraordinary, it’s to hang knives on it. If you don’t know, I love pocket knives.

The second very cool thing in the store was the musical mechanical clock that was contained in a glass case. I didn’t know what this was at first, but I looked around online a bit and found out. It’s indeed a very large musical clock. Take a look at the internal gears and such.

An area that definitely caught our eyes was the snowshoe section. I have never actually touched a real (modern) snowshoe, so that was fun. I have dreams of snowshoeing, but towards the end of those dreams, I’m very tired, so I fill the remainder of the dream with walking on packed snow. It’s so much easier.

As we were browsing the snowshoes, we noticed that a group of people broke out in song right next to us. I decided to snap a sneaky picture of them.

Okay, moving on. There are only a few more things I’d like to show you that were inside the store. The first one is the coy pond. This is a pond that’s located underneath one of the staircases that leads to the second level. There were a few large white fish in this pond.

Next up is another Christmas tree. This one is better than the last.

And finally, I have some more stuffed animals for you. Here’s a group from above as I was walking down the stairs.

And here are the moose and deer up close.

After we left the store, we walked around town a bit. It’s a good walking town with lots to do. There are many neat shops, such as a Mexicali Blues, among others. We’ve been to two sister shops of this store in other towns.

It’s basically a shop for females and there’s not a lot for a dude like me to do, but it’s so fun to take pictures of the weird hippy stuff.

We also went in a few other shops. The goods are a bit pricey, so sometimes it’s best to just look.

Here’s Wilber’s of Maine Chocolates.

And here’s Maine Wreath & Flower Factory.

We did a lot of walking around, but before we left, I snapped a few additional shots of the rear of Linda Bean’s restaurant. It had a cool urban thing going on.

Okay, off to Brunswick we went. We followed Route 1 north and in just a few miles, landed in town. Brunswick is an interesting place to visit. There are tons of restaurants on Maine Street (yes, “Maine” Street) and there’s a very nice college there as well. Bowdoin College to be exact. The campus is beautiful, so we drove around it a bit. I love colleges, especially private rich ones like this. They’re the best. Not that I went to a private rich one, but that doesn’t stop me from loving them.

Brusnwick had more of a city feel to it than Freeport did. It’s not actually a city, but it’s rather old and it does have Victorian homes and the such. Here are a few shots of different things that caught my eye as we were walking around. Mostly Christmas wreaths.

Here are some more Christmas wreaths and a house.

The primary reason I wanted to stop in Brunswick is to use a gift certificate I had for Bull Moose. Bull Moose is an incredible music, video game and movie store. I love it and they’re all over Maine. So much stuff and such good deals.

With the gift certificate, we bought four Christmas movies that are fun to watch every year. You know, Chevy Chase kind of stuff. I think we threw another movie in there too, but I can’t remember what that was.

The other reason we went to Brunswick was to eat some lobster at Cameron’s Lobster House. I had yet to eat a lobster roll since arriving in Maine and I thought it was about time.

This particular lobster house is a drive-in. You can pull right into a spot with your car and push a button and someone will come out to take your order. We didn’t do that. We stayed inside and ate there.

And as a finale for this post, I’ll let you know that Cameron’s Lobster House also sells Christmas trees. I thought it would be nice for me to pose in front of one. Tell me if you love it.

After we had finished eating, we hopped in the car and drove back home. The way back seemed shorter than the way there, but it was still pretty far. Until next time! Thanks for reading!

Yesterday was a very, very busy day. In the morning, I had to run down into town to get an estimate on some damage that was done to our vehicle. As I was driving to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class last Tuesday evening, someone backed into the driver’s side door while I was waiting at a red light. So that needs to get fixed because now there’s a large and ugly dent in that door. Luckily, I’ve been moving the process along at a steady pace and by next month, things will be shiny and straight again.

When I got home, Laura took me up on my offer to drive out to Camden for some photography of the harbor. As you may recall, the last time we visited that town, the ships were all covered with shrink wrap, which protected them from the winter elements. Well, they’re all unwrapped now and the town is hopping with action. Around 1pm, we jumped in the car with the dented door and drove an hour and 45 minutes out to Camden, Maine.

Camden is a photographer’s dream. It’s the kind of place that sort of overwhelms you with its picturesque nature. After parking, we walked across town to the library. Before we got there though, I spotted a statue and began snapping away at it. It’s so distracting being there, but I guess that’s a good thing. I took hundreds of photos yesterday that I’ll filter through to show you here.

Here’s a few photos of the statue.

Since we were so close to the library, I thought that I’d like to get some better photos of it than we were able to last time. The last time we were in town, it ended up raining for part of the day. This time, it was sunshine from morning to night. This is the side of the library and the lower level. As you can see, the entire lower level is under ground.

From the same point, I turned around to take a look at the harbor, which is probably the easiest thing on earth to photograph. Trust me when I say this, it’s tempting to just stand there taking the same photo over and over. I tried to control myself though.

These are three ships that were sitting side by side. I must have taken 40 pictures of these things, so prepare yourself for more of them down below.

Here’s one of the boats more up close. I wonder how large a ship needs to be to cross the Atlantic. Do you think one of these could make the trip?

If I had to guess, I’d say those boats were about 60 feet long. I think they could make it if they tried.

Right outside the library was a small area that had something to do with kids. Something like a kid’s park or a kid’s patio. I forget. The cool part of this area was how they put together the concrete benches. The made the pillars in the shapes of books. Take a look.

Here’s another one.

And since it’s spring, I felt that I should add some photos of the many beautiful flowers at this small area. There were lots to choose from, so I’ll only add a few.

Right past the small park was one of the entrances to the amphitheater. You may recall this area from my last post. I thought one of the potted plants that sat above the entrance looked pretty cool, so I took a picture of that. I’ll even add one of the back of the library across the lawn as well.

Okay, moving on. I’m not sure we got any decent photos of the front of the library last time, so we had to get up there to do so. On the way, I took a picture of the Camden Main Street.

Here she is, in all of her glory. What a place.

Now it’s time to really get down to the harbor. There’s a road that travels across the back of the library and connects to one that heads all the way out so you can get a nice view back to the town. I found this on Google Earth and have been eager to see the view for myself. The view out into the harbor from the first road is really perfect.

It’s the kind of place where artists set up their easels. It’s so pretty.

The road we took to the outer edge of the harbor was called Sea Street. It led to a marina that had tons of docks and great vantage points for some rather stunning photography. After we arrive, I noticed some big houses across the water. My kind of houses. If you look at the photo below, you’ll see the houses, but you’ll also see some islands to the left of them. Look closely because those islands are tough to see. Maine’s coast is full of interesting islands. Some are inhabited and some aren’t.

There were tons of boats stored at the marina. If you’ve ever wondered how these places put the boats in the water, perhaps this will help you out.

What a machine.

Looking back at the town from the very end of the last dock was so exciting for me. I love going as far as I can go, and in this case, if I went any further, I would have been in the water. The photos were a bit tough to take because I was looking straight into the sun, but I’m sure you get the idea.

Here’s one somewhat more up close.

The part I enjoyed the most was looking at all the boats. Each and every one of them was beautiful. There were no “not so nice” ones to find anywhere, which made the exploration all the more sweet. I’m telling you, the money in these things was incredible. Here’s the first boat I noticed.

And here are those three large boats from a different view. I told you there’d be more of them.

This is the library view from all the way at the end of the docks.

You don’t get much prettier than that.

What would a trip to the Maine coast be without a photo of some classic lobster traps?

For the next few photos, I think I’ll just say that they’re boats. I like all of them, but I don’t have much to say about them more than that, so I’ll just list them.

This is a double-hull sailboat.

And these are almost twin sailboats.

These two boats were so beautiful. The woodworking was incredible. Here are the names of the boats.

Just to add some wildlife to this post, I’ll show you some strange black ducks that were sitting on one of the docks out near the middle of the harbor.

As I was doing my exploring, a large sailboat came in to dock. I think there are rides out into the ocean available in Camden, so I think we’re going to check that out. Here’s one of the men working the ropes at the front of the boat.

Hey, you wanna see the last of those three boats? Here you go. Now this is a nice photo, if I don’t say so myself.

From the harbor it’s fairly simple to see the tower at the top of Mount Battie. Every time I visit the coast of Maine, I’m surprised at the number of large mountains nearby. Mount Battie is one of them that can be hiked. The tower is a few miles from the park at its base. I’m assuming the view from the top is spectacular.

After leaving the marina, we walked back to town via Sea Street. This is a very nice road with many beautiful homes on it. If I were a wealthy man, I could picture myself picking up a house in this area.

Here’s a tree lined Sea Street for you.

This is one of the back yards that belongs to one of the houses on this road. I haven’t seen grass like this in a long time. Right over the hump of grass is the water. And then there’s the town in the distance.

Perhaps this will make things more clear. You can see the town through the trees in this photo.

This is one of the homes on this street. They were all beautiful. I just randomly chose one to photograph.

Finally, for my last photo from Camden, I preset “Megunticook Falls.” There’s a small river that runs through town and at the end of that river are these falls. The water leads right into the ocean.

After all that action, we left Camden. I actually wanted to go to one of the local restaurants for some late lunch, but they were packed solid with people. They wanted us to wait 25 minutes for a table. Can you believe that? Since I’m not one to wait, we got in the car and left.

The route we took home leads right through a very small town called Belgrade Lakes. This is a quiet town that sort of reminds me of Camden. It’s got some money there and the houses are very nice. I love being around that sort of thing. We’ve passed by this area a few times and every time we do, I say that we should have stopped for some photography. There’s a small waterfall right off the side of the road and behind that waterfall is the prettiest and smoothest water you’ll ever see. Actually, the movie On Golden Pond is supposed to be based in this area. I don’t see why it wouldn’t be; the area is quite tranquil.

This time, when we passed through Belgrade Lakes, we stopped. There’s a tiny parking area right off the road that leads into a tiny park. The area is called Peninsula Park.

This is the small man-made waterfall. I guess it isn’t a waterfall as much as it is a water barrier.

As I said, the park is tiny. What I wanted to photograph were some boaters out on the lake. They were fishing and having a good ol’ time. Check this out. This is what you call the “golden hour” in the photography world.

It was so nice and so much fun taking photos of these guys. Here’s one more.

The shoreline of this lake is beautiful as well. It’s not tough to find a nice area.

Across the street is just as wonderful. There a cove that leads to Great Pond. This is what leads out to the lake.

And this is the area that sits up against the road.

Okay, so that’s all for the photos, but don’t despair. I have some video too. Please click the link below to visit the video or simply click inside the video to watch it here. If you’re reading this via email, you’ll need to click the link, since video doesn’t appear in the email. Also, please excuse the wind. It dies down towards the end, but I couldn’t get rid of it at the beginning.

Camden Harbor & Belgrade Lakes, Maine

This was a really good one. I’ve been to some sugar houses in my day and I have to say that this particular sugar house was a lot of fun. I’m not sure if it was because of the energy of all the people inside of it or if it was because of all the steam coming out of the boiler, but I am sure it was a good time.

We almost didn’t have a Maine Maple Sunday this year. We had originally planned on going to a new sugar house that wasn’t too far from where we lived, but when we passed by, all I saw was a pickup truck sitting on the side of the road nearby. I wasn’t sure if it was the right place and when we deduced that it was, in fact, the right place, I felt all weird about being pretty much the only people there. When I go to these things, I need action. And steam. Lots and lots of steam.

After we decided to skip that one, I just kept on driving. I asked Laura if she wanted to head up to Sugarloaf for an event they were having up there, but she suggested that we head into Farmington instead. We heard whispers of a gathering on Titcomb Hill Road. I had no idea where that was, so I decided to drive down a back road that offered good views of the hills. Little did I know, we were actually on Titcomb Hill Road and after we drove for a few miles, we saw some cars lined up on the shoulder. And that’s when I saw all the steam. Tons of steam.

We pulled over and began walking towards the sugar house. I was pretty excited because I hadn’t seen a functioning evaporator in some time. It’s hit or miss when it comes to finding sap this time of year and for the past few years, it’s been less than the best. Last year was okay, but the years before that were only sort of okay.

As we were walking towards the building, I snapped a few photos. I saw an old truck in the woods and I just had to get it. I love these old trucks and if my eyes aren’t deceiving me, I think this one is a Ford F750. I have a Ford F250, so this one is quite a bit heavier duty.

I could tell the farm was having a good day of boiling because steam was pouring out of the roof. It was actually billowing. Good stuff.

By the way, the place we stopped at was called Maple Hill Farm and I was so eager to get inside. First though, I thought I’d take a photo of the countryside around the Farmington, Maine area. It’s always a pleasure to see that from such a vantage point.

Of course, I had to take pictures of some odds and ends on the way into the sugar house. This one is of the firewood they use in the evaporator along with a few syrup barrels.

I’m not sure what this one is, but my hunch is that it’s a piece of an old wire spool.

And finally, we have the entrance sign.

Okay, let’s get inside. I’ll show you the coolest thing first. This is one of the guys feeding the evaporator some firewood. It was so hot over on that end. I know because I shot some video over there and I was getting a bit heated. Lots of energy needed to boil off this volume of sap.

And this is what the entrance to the stove looks like.

It was such a hot fire.

Here are a few photos of the evaporator at work. The guys there told me that it was cranking even more before we showed up. I love this stuff.

This is a bucket of sap resting in the evaporator waiting to be filtered. It’s got to stay warm.

And this is a really cool shot of the steam rising up to exit the opening in the roof.

This is the view from the end of the evaporator.

These are the channels that the almost done syrup flows through.

And last but not least, we have a close-up of some boiling syrup.

Oh yeah, one more of the steam. This is of it exiting the hole in the roof.

Next, I’ll show you some of what the inside of the sugar house looked like. There was interesting stuff all over the place.

Here’s a shot of the current crew and visitors.

The owners of the farm were selling all sorts of really good food. The ice cream with the syrup drizzled over it was my favorite.

Here are some barrels that are full of pure maple syrup.

I believe this machine filters the maple syrup, but I’m not 100% positive.

I have some video of this machine in operation down below.

And finally for the photos, I have some unused buckets that were waiting to be filled.

And then some old snowshoes. This is so classic Maine. Everyone has some of these somewhere.

I think I can sum up today’s visit as interesting. I think my favorite part of doing things like this is looking around to see what’s going on inside the sugar houses. There’s bound to be old stuff that’s been there forever. It sort of reminds me of when I was a kid. I enjoy the fact that structures like this have been standing for such a long time. It’s nice to see something that hasn’t changed all that much through the years.

Anyway, let me show you the video from today. This was so much fun to take. The best part is, out of the six clips used to make this video, I didn’t have to cut anything out. My favorite part is the talking. You get a pretty good picture of what visiting a sugar house like this is all about. Just a few people chatting about syrup and eating some food. It’s a good time.

If you’re reading this post via email, you’ll need to click the following link to view the video. Videos don’t show up in the emails.

Maple Hill Farm Sugar House in Farmington, Maine

I’m so glad it snowed two nights ago and was sunny yesterday because it was the perfect setting for a visit to Farmington. Ever since I was a kid, I loved seeing the bright snow the day after. The sun definitely needs to be out because if it’s not, it’s just another day. If it’s sunny outside, everything practically glows. If you add slush to the mix and huge piles of plowed snow all over the place, you pretty much have yourself a winter wonderland. I do love the winter, you know. I said it on a number of occasions yesterday. It was 17 degrees outside and I said that I could live like this forever. Everything was so pretty. And with all that sun, it hardly felt cold at all.

We had to run into town for a few different things. We have a music store right in town that I wanted to visit. I never paid much attention to that music store. I really had no reason to consider it until I picked my guitar back up. Nowadays, guitar is all I can think about so the music store is beginning to matter to me. We had to run into Reny’s as well and we also wanted to make a quick pit stop at the bookstore. The bookstore sells only used books and it’s worth it to swing by every so often to see what they have in stock. We haven’t been there in quite some time.

A winter’s visit to Farmington wouldn’t be complete without stopping by our lake to see who’s sitting in their ice houses. Yesterday, on the way to town, there was only one ice house. On the way back, there were quite a few. There were also a lot more snowmobile tracks on the snow then as well. Here are a few photos of the lake.

I’m not sure what the fisherpeople do in these huts all day, but they do pull out some gigantic fish. I have a buddy who showed me some photos of a few salmon he caught in northern Maine. They were huge!

I snapped a picture of one of the huts that was resting near the shore.

I decided to take a few photos of some houses on the lake too. Some of these houses, especially the ones on the back side, are huge. They sell for prices in the millions. Needless to say, the owners of these pieces of property pay most of the taxes in the town for us. Thank you very much for that. Thanking certain people doesn’t happen nearly enough today.

And finally, since our grand old flag was flying high in the sunshine, I decided to grab a photo of that too.

Maine Maple Sunday is fast approaching, so this sign was of interest to me. I’m always looking for new sugar houses to visit and if this one is on the list, we’ll be sure to stop by. It’s located about half way between our house and Farmington.

Okay, after we parked in town, we went straight to a place called Everyday Music. It’s located right on Broadway in Farmington. This is the store that I’ve been driving by since we got here and never gave it much notice.

This music store is actually really cool. The owner sells used vinyl and cds and all sorts of instruments. The primary purpose of our visit was to get the lay of the land. I wanted to ask if they did instrument repairs and I wanted to also see what brands of guitars they sold. Unfortunately, they couldn’t get their hands on the brand I’m interested in, but they do repairs, which is very good to know.

Here’s a photo of the outside of the store.

I’m thinking that the largest customer base for this store is the students from the university. I bet there’s always a steady stream of foot traffic from them. It was a nice place.

Moving on. We also had to pick up a few grocery items from Reny’s, which was located directly across the street. Check out those snow piles. This is what I was talking about when I said I love it after it snows. The landscape changes so much.

It’s a good old fashioned main street with hardware stores and thrift shops. It’s a lot of fun to walk around on.

Here are some used skis for sale from one of the thrift stores.

A few Halloweens ago, there was a “walk around town” art show with all different types of paintings and exhibits. I totally forgot to bring the camera for that one. Luckily, there’s still a remanence of the art leftover on some of the walls. What you see below was painted on a wall in an alleyway right next to Reny’s.

I snapped this photo as we were walking out of Reny’s. It was definitely a sunglass kind of day. Luckily, we both purchased new sunglasses while we were there. I have a feeling you’ll see a picture of me wearing them by the time this post is through.

Just a reminder for all of you who have bad memories out there. Valentine’s Day is this Wednesday. Be sure you take care of your sweetheart on this very special day.

Our next stop was the bookstore. As I mentioned above, it’s always a good idea to stop by to see what they they have in stock. This bookstore is called Twice Sold Tales and it’s located right on Main Street.

On the way there, we walked by Tuck’s Ale House. This is a new bar in town. It’s only a few years old and is already very popular.

And we saw the big beautiful Franklin County courthouse.

We passed by a few more small shops before making it to the bookstore.

It’s strange how blue the photos get once the sun disappears behind the buildings.

This bookstore is fairly large. It’s not crazy large or anything, but it’s got a good number of books.

I usually head straight for the cooking section and the fiction section. I did happen to locate a nice cookbook about muffins and quick breads that I bought. Here I am holding one that I almost purchased. I was so close, but decided that I simply wouldn’t use it enough. It’s about pasta. It looked so good.

While all the dishes looked stunning, I guess it didn’t help that every single title was written in Italian. I had no idea what anything was.

The books range from $3 to about $12, depending on their size and demand. They’re usually around $4 each in the fiction section and between $6 and $9 in the cooking section.

Are you ready for this? This is the photo of the day. It’s me sitting in one of the chairs in the bookstore while wearing my new sunglasses. You have to admit that I look totally cool. I mean please. And check out those new shoes.

Enough of that nonsense. Our visit was coming to an end. We left the bookstore and passed by Java Joe’s, a local coffeehouse. It’s incredible how many towns have a Java Joe’s. I seem to remember one back while I was in college.

As we were leaving, I thought it would be a nice idea to hop off the beaten path and walk up church street and then through the alleyway I showed you earlier. On the way, we saw some more leftover art from that show some years back.

In case you’re interested, this is what it looks like around here after they plow the roads. It’s always an adventure.

And finally, I took a picture of a cute little cemetery right in the middle of town. I have no idea how old this is, but it sure is pretty.

Well, that’s about it. I hope you enjoyed my short walking town of Farmington, Maine. I do like taking the camera out with me while we’re on these short adventures and I hope you get a kick out of looking at random and sometimes interesting shots of our local area. Have a great day!