Camden, Maine, as seen from Mount Battie
17 June 2022
28 May 2022
It takes forever to get out of New Jersey. We breeze through New York, then get stuck in Connecticut traffic. Because Connecticut. And because a storm is brewing. I get a good look at the clouds when we pull over for a rest.
The cell is moving in the same direction we are. Jack takes a picture through the windshield with his phone.
The storm catches us. Visibility drops. Traffic crawls. This is as good a time as any to pull off the highway and get gas. By the time we reach the gas station, fill up, and get back on the highway, the front has passed us and traffic is moving at normal speed again.
Then Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and, finally, across the Piscataqua River into Maine. Somewhere north of Portland, Waze puts us on Route 1 and we're driving east. All the while, we drive through rain and marvel at the clouds. It's evening now, but Jack manages a photo as we drive. This time the pictures aren't as dramatic as the real thing.
We reach Camden, Maine several hours behind the estimate Waze gave us at 9:00 this morning. Our hotel is called the Riverhouse, which I keep confusing with River Horse because I live in central Jersey. We have enough time to unpack and walk across town to the restaurant Jack has picked out.
That's Jack's thing when we travel. I gawp at the scenery, he searches for a good wine list. We get to the restaurant a little early. While we wait for our outside table, which is under an open tent with rugs that cover what was clearly a driveway, I notice that the clouds are moving out.
Behind them is a mountain. I Google Map it and find that it's either Mount Battie, which we can drive up -- will drive up, I decide -- or Mount Megunticook, which we can't.
We're in an otherwise residential neighborhood. Across the street are two houses, clearly new, that tower over the others. Three kids pop out of the nearer house and move on down the street. The car in front is one of those rich-person cars, a BMW or Mercedes or something. Both houses are loaded with large windows that show off atriums and stairways. I get curious and check Zillow. The near one sold in November 2021 for just shy of 2 million dollars.
Welcome to coastal Maine.
After dinner we walk past the houses on our way down the hill towards the center of town. The second house goes all the way to the sidewalk on one side and all the way to an alley in the back. Jack looks up at the next house down the hill. "All they have to do is build one floor up and there goes the view."
We scope out the candy store, a place of some repute, apparently; and we look for the hours of the used book store a few doors down. We'll be back for these tomorrow.
After breakfast at the hotel, indoors because the outdoor seat cushions are still wet, we walk into town.
Across from the modest hotel parking lot is a foot bridge over the Megunticook River. There are buildings straddling it. Yikes. I'm thinking about Ida and Lower Creek Road.
There's a little park by the harbor.
Algae on the rocks by the shore cast a greenish tint to the water above.
The Megunticook drains into a little waterfall.
It passes under more buildings before tumbling into the harbor.
I catch a glimpse of the two-million-dollar houses we passed last night. They're center right in the photo below:
One can only assume that the view does not include the workaday chaos visible from where we're standing.
I convince Jack that we need to drive up to Mount Battie. We walk back to the car. I take another picture of houses straddling the river.
Camden Hills is a state park. We pay our entrance fee and then drive up Mount Battie Road. It's steep, with potholes. I imagine trying to climb this with Miss Piggy. "It's gotta be ten percent," I tell Jack, who also thinks it looks brutal. (I just checked. The steepest section is 13 percent, leveling off to 6-10%, over 1.4 miles and 500+ feet of elevation gain.)
There's a short path from the summit parking lot to the actual summit. Below us is the cove of Camden's harbor.
Jack, canvas bag slung over his right shoulder, grudgingly puts up with me scampering about with my camera.
There's a tower.
I go in.
'Scuse me, caterpillar!
It's a little staircase leading to a big view:
I have to wait a few minutes for the stairwell to clear out before I can make my way down again.
There are helpful signs posted at the summit that tell us what we're seeing out there. If you look at a map and draw a straight line east from Camden, you'll clip the southern end of Mount Desert Island. Cadillac Mountain, apparently, is visible from here.
If you say so, sign.
Is that the long Cadillac slope I've come to fear?
The sign says this could be Schoodic Mountain.
Or maybe that's this one.
I hear the sound of a freehub coasting. A fellow who looks a lot like Winter Larry, all beanpole legs, takes in the view. I have to go talk to him, of course. He's come in from Brunswick, Maine, (which, from the center of town, via Route 1, is nearly 60 miles, Google Maps tells me, but I don't know this in the moment) and agrees that the climb pretty much sucks. This dude is well out of my league. I have to show my bona fides, meager as they are; I point to what I think is Cadillac Mountain and tell him I'll be climbing it tomorrow. He likes that climb.
I snap a few more photos.
I'm not even going to hazard a guess about how much this little gem down at the end of the cove costs. Never mind the flood insurance. Part of me says, "Yeah, I'd live there."
We drive back into town, finding a parking spot in a secluded lot up a hill, behind the town library. Next to the library is a century-old ampitheater.
Jack spots the twig mooses hiding in ground cover somewhere en route to the main drag:
If one wants to buy an island, one would do well to contact these folks:
I've seen Landvest properties listed at the bottom of the BarHarborCam web page. They are not for the likes of you and me.
The book store is, alas, closed. The candy store, however, is open. Jack waits outside while I have a dandy time inside. There's stuff in here I haven't seen since the heady Pick-N-Mix days of London Woolworth's. I load up on sugar that's going to take me half a year to get through. One thing that's missing is Jack's favorite: foam bananas that we call "banana slugs." Think circus peanuts, but yellow. They're absolutely gross, which means he gets them all to himself.
We find outdoor seating at Blaze, which is yet another restaurant I'd thought unique to Bar Harbor. (It's not; they're one of those not-quite-chain places that is slowly proliferating through Downeast Maine.) Blaze has their own brewery, so I try their latest sour, Backshore, which I like. I cannot, for the life of me, keep the name in my head. I keep landing on backwater and Back Bay. To solve this problem, I buy a 4-pack on our way out.
We walk back to the car. It's time to get to my happy place, Bar Harbor.
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