Four Days In Maine, Part Five

Stonington and Deer Isle

When I was little, my mom read Blueberries for Sal to me. When my children were little, I read One Morning in Maine to them. Visiting Robert McCloskey country was another motivator for this Maine getaway. With the sun finally making an appearance, we headed to Stonington on Deer Isle where I expected magic.

We found magic, but we also found reality in this working class island that’s the state’s biggest lobster port and launching point to the remaining working quarry in the area on Crotch Island. Stonington and Deer Isle felt rural to me in a way that the rest of our trip had not. Remove the dramatic sea views and lobster pots and replace them with rolling hills and we would have felt like we were at home in Appalachia.

We did spend most of our time gazing at the sea and thinking about Robert McCloskey and his little girl Sal. Chris kindly triangulated between Wikipedia and google maps so that we could look out on the Scott Islands where the McCloskey family lived and which is now a nature preserve. Stonington was a perfect spot for our last evening in Maine.

The Deer Isle Bridge: You think this rural girl is going to go over a big suspension bridge and not mention it? Think again. The bridge goes over a body of water called Eggemoggin Reach and connects the Deer Isles to the mainland. Bridge nerds can read the fascinating -- I’m not joking -- details of construction and maintenance on the wiki link.

Model Village: Everette Knowelton created a mini-version of the town and donated the model village to Stonington on his death. The village sits in a wooded lot at the entrance to the main street in town. We were delighted and took photos of ourselves as giants.

Fin and Fern: By happenstance, we came across the best food of our trip and splurged here. Located in an older home with a limited number of tables, we managed to snag a two-top when every other seat was reserved for the evening. We had a view right toward the Scott Islands and the sea. The food was excellent: the lightest fried fish and the most subtly garlicky scallops followed our appetizer of a lobster egg roll. We noticed we were surrounded by WASPs and that incited a mini-panic in me. We were, no doubt, out of place. Everyone in that restaurant looked like their ancestors’ portraits hung in museums. If any pictures of my ancestors are in a museum, they’ll just be ruddy-faced serfs digging up potatoes in a field. I distracted myself with the view and the food and then the arrival of a local woman named Sal. Everyone in the restaurant was so excited to see here. It’s Sal! Sal’s here! All the previously stoic but sculptured faces lit up with genuine joy. Chris and I liked to imagine that this seventy-something mystery woman was Sal of the blueberry fame.

There’s A Treat: We passed on dessert at Fin and Fern so that we could race to this roadside stand before it closed. Chris had been on the lookout for rhubarb for me, and he had finally located a piece of strawberry rhubarb pie. The pie turned out to more strawberry than rhubarb, but it was good for a strawberry pie with golden crust. If we’d arrived more than five minutes before closing, we would have settled ourselves at one of the picnic tables and gotten soft-serve, too.

But, pie in hand, we crossed the bridge back to the mainland to pack up our things. It was time to leave the seaside for Kentucky. At the Portland airport the next morning, there were signs everywhere urging people to move to Maine. Don’t think I wasn’t tempted.