I have no idea.
19 June 2025
On June 3, we didn't drive straight to Portland. We stopped first at the Big Chicken Barn in Ellsworth. The place is exactly as described (follow the link for photos): a big chicken barn. The entire upper floor is dedicated to books, where Jack went. Downstairs was filled with antiques, where I wandered.
More than one stall was selling "depression glass," otherwise known as "uranium glass," otherwise known as radioactive.
I found an intriguing cut-glass sculpture that was priced at $20, so why not? When I paid, they only charged me $17. It needed cleaning and some careful stray glue removal. The cut glass squares were on the sharp side.
Jack was disappointed in the football field-sized book collection, but he didn't leave empty-handed.
We realized we'd better find lunch somewhere. Jack searched on his phone while we drove down Route 3. "Pull in here," he said as we almost passed Lori's Cafe. "It's the only thing around and it closes in half an hour."
"Where are we?" I asked as we waited for our diner-style food. I checked my phone. Liberty, Maine. I bought two large, wrapped muffins on the way out. We might need road food at some point.
Next stop, Wilbur's of Maine, because chocolate-covered cranberries.
Then to Allagash Brewery, because sour beer. They dug up a 6-bottle case of Stories Told for me, still young enough not to have gone bad.
We arrived at our hotel, the Cambria, earlier than we'd expected. Jack had made dinner plans for us with an academic friend. We had time to wander around Old Port a little.
There were moose on offer:
In a wine shop, we stumbled into a tasting. There was a sparkling wine made from Maine blueberries which was surprisingly not awful (I hate red wine, so this is saying something). We promised to come back the next day to pick up a bottle and other things; right now, we had a mile to walk and didn't want to haul anything that far and back.
It was when we were getting ready for bed that we noticed the bluetooth mirror. I felt instantly old and clueless. Jack hit the switch, wondering if it would play music from his phone. He checked his phone's bluetooth connections, and the list showed every mirror on the floor. We never did figure out how this mirror worked, let alone why. (But if one searches for "bluetooth mirror," one finds that bluetooth mirrors are a thing. Sure. Whatever.)
The next day was spent at the Portland Museum of Art and at various bookshops.
There's a lot of random art in Portland. "Live Nerds:"
In Longfellow Books, there was a greeting card that read, "Do it with the passion of a misguided Republican."
We found another wine shop that served sample flights. Jack liked the place enough to pick up a couple of bottles. They didn't have the blueberry wine that I wanted to get for friends back home though.
Lunch was at a pizza place we stumbled upon. I boxed up half of mine for the drive home the next day.
When we arrived at the other wine shop an hour and fifteen minutes before closing, they were just locking up. I told them what I'd come for and they told us to go to their other location down the road. Fortunately, we found what we were looking for two doors over.
I wanted to sit and look at the water a bit, but the only place we could find a bench was at the edge of the marina. It wasn't very satisfying.
The little wind turbine was mesmerizing though. I remembered it from previous visits.
After dinner, we had ice cream at Beal's (where we'd gone on a previous visit). There was a painting directly on the wall that I couldn't stop looking at.
There was one other confusing thing in our hotel room: a small pillow on the bed that read, "hop picking traffic." This, also, is apparently a thing, or was. In England. Google it. Maine is a big craft beer state, so, shrug?
The drive home from Portland nonstop is about 6.5 hours. We planned stops. We left the hotel around 9:30 and drove to Cape Elizabeth so I could look at the water at the Portland Head lighthouse in Fort Williams Park.
This might be the Ram Island Ledge light station.
There's a gravel path along the coast that I walked a section of last time. This time there wasn't time, and besides, we had beer and chocolate in the car. I made it a quick stop.
From there, we drove to Scarborough, the suburb directly south of Portland, to visit Lenny, the life-size chocolate moose. That's Jack's reason. My reason is the best chocolate-covered blueberries and chocolate-covered pretzels around.
Of course, there was a bucket of moose.
They have a bathroom in a separate building. I was somewhat delayed there because I saw a Phiddipus audax (bold jumping spider) on the wall outside, and I had to take a million pictures with my cell phone to get a few in focus.
From there, we went southwest to Alfred Maine, to Jack's favorite antiquarian bookshop, DeWolfe and Wood. It's the ground floor and lower level of an old house. Jack has scored some valuable tomes there, but not this time.
We continued south, to Wells, where Jack wanted to revisit another antiquarian bookstore. It had recently relocated to the owner's 17-room house, and the selection was in chaos. I walked back outside in time to see a jumping spider on the wall. I'd never seen a Salticus scenicus (zebra jumping spider), so that was cool.
At 1:00 we hit the road. I thought we'd soon reach one of the service plazas on the Maine Turnpike, but we were south of all of them. That meant I'd have to buy a yo-yo online.
We arrived home in time to scrounge the refrigerator for a late dinner and get a load of laundry in. The next day, I cleaned the chicken barn sculpture and put it on the shelf near our front door, under a Maine moose from 2017.
And now, two weeks later, I'm finally finished blogging about our vacation.
