Maine 2023 Part 3: Marginal Way, OMAA, and Kennebunkport

Marginal Way, Ogunquit, ME

9 June 2023

After breakfast at the hotel, we set out to Marginal Way, a 1-mile paved path along the cliffs above the ocean. We had to walk another mile, through town, to reach the northern end.

I decided, after seeing the shops and the expensive real estate, that the best description I can give for Central Jersey folks is that Ogunquit is what would happen if New Hope and Sandy Hook had a baby.

The weather was perfect: clear, warm, dry, and a little breezy.

Our plan was to walk to the other end then turn around. Later we'd drive to the Ogunquit Museum of American Art.

Looking north towards the beach, we could see the changes in color of the water, from blue to green to brown, as it rolled over the shallow mouth of the Ogunquit River. 

Many of the trees on Marginal Way were windswept.

Maybe this is the beach we ran around on as kids?

If you click on this photo and zoom in, you can learn, in great detail, the geology of the Ogunquit coastline.

Marginal Way's southern terminus is at Perkins Cove. A drawbridge opened up to let a fishing boat through.

While I was invetigating (ha!) a candy shop, Jack figured out that we were within walking distance of the art museum.

We crossed over the inlet at the drawbridge.

From there, we walked on the street, because there were no sidewalks, for half a mile or so until we reached the museum. Along the way I found a horse chestnut in bloom. We used to have these all over where I grew up, but they were felled by a fungal blight that browned the leaves earlier and earlier each year. We had one in our yard that eventually succumbed too.

The first thing I did when we went inside the Ogunquit Museum of American Art was to ask about the statue of Nixon in the pond. The receptionist looked old enough to maybe know what I was talking about.

She did. "Oh, the Langlais Nixon! We don't have him anymore. He's at the preserve in Cushing," she said, as if I had a clue where Cushing was. (Answer: way the hell up the coast, south of Camden, maybe on the way to Bar Harbor next time.) I was just glad that the thing was, indeed, real, and not some jumbled part of my nightmare childhood memory.

So we went through the museum, which took not much time at all.

Outside were two Langlais sculptures.

There's the pond he was in.

We walked back to town, had lunch, and then went back to the hotel. The tide was out now, leaving a narrow thread of river between us and the beach.

When we went out again, it was to Kennebunkport, where we had late dinner reservations. The town was a short drive up the coast. We assumed there would be more to it. It was almost 5:00 on a weekday and stores were closing for the night.

We poked our heads into some of the shops. We found a righteous metal spare-parts moose, likely made by the same person whose work is also in A Mano in Lambertville. We already have a small moose and a cat.

Nobody I ride with would buy this. They'd make their own.

I have a visual memory of the shop where the cloth dog and bird puppets came from. I remember a narrow wooden walkway, with a railing on one side and little shops on the other. I remembered white wood. As we wandered around the ghost town, I kept looking for an expanse of shops along the water. What we found was a cluster of them, enclosing a little inlet. The wood was wood-colored, not white, and while the shops were indeed small, none was devoted to googly-eyed cloth puppets. I know we were in the store twice in two years, and that one of us got a brown dog the second time. Whether it was mine to begin with or I adopted the brown one, I wound up with both. They're collecting dust on the top of the bookshelf above the desk I'm writing from right now. Hang on, let me get a picture.

There was no point in driving back to Ogunquit, so we found a bench at the edge of a park by the water. I took a handful of pictures, then sat with Jack and read for a while until the wind was too much. 

Jack had made reservations at a place called Earth at Hidden Pond. We found ourselves winding our way up a long hill in the woods. On either side were luxurious cabins (yours for only $1700 per night!) set back from the road. At the very top was the restaurant. Our table wasn't ready (or maybe I looked every bit of my meager salary and was stinking up the place), so they sent us to sit outside by the fire pit to wait.

This, was, I suppose, the hidden pond.

While we were waiting, I checked in with Bar Harbor Cam to see what the sunset was like up there.

 Tomorrow night we'd be in the picture.