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!
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