Island View Inn Rockport

... tracked down a friend of hers who sells fresh lobster. We grabbed about 20 or so, a few bags of groceries and beer and headed for the hills where her sister, Holly, and her family live. Holly is also an old Jackson gal and moved back to her home in Camden, where she met up with her man and now is a mama of two beautiful toddlers. She threw such an awesome lobster feast for us up at her place in Hope, Maine. Our friend, Sessa and her family joined us...kids EVERYWHERE...it ...

... into Maine in early afternoon and had the most wonderful sense of euphoria at being back inside our wonderful United States of America again. It's very hard to describe and even harder to figure out. But it feels good to be in the Homeland!

We ignored our itinerary which called for us to bunk tonight near Bangor and followed Hwy 1A down the west side of the Penobscot River and finally along ...

... live on the boat and just enjoy each day to the fullest. What an inspiration!

After Camden, we headed south and drove through Bath and a couple of smaller towns. We saw the shipyards of Bath from a distance, but tours were not available. We found a small town...very small...that had a great restaurant! We ate on the balcony outside...overlooking the river AND the railroad tracks! LOL The ...

... works in the diner and was there today!

We had some delicious pie -- well worth the drive. Afterward we drove to an alpaca farm that is about a mile from Moody's. The guy had a nice little shop where we bought some socks. His prices were outstanding and he has a little web site at www.alpacavillage.com. The trouble is, we could barely stand the guy, he was so arrogant. A really nice Canadian couple left the place ...

... amenities we need. In contrast now, the Blue Hill Farm Inn was quite an unpleasant aberration. It was a good location from which to explore the more northern reaches of the coast but by the time we were leaving, we were very glad to be leaving...

As we drove out of Blue Hill yesterday (which is a very charming little village, make no mistake) we stopped at a potter's studio that we had seen and read about ...

... must sees.   We had lunch with our friends, Lynn and Gerry, at the museum then picked up our rental car and headed north.  We spent the night in Portland at the Chadwick Inn.  The bed and breakfast was great and the breakfast particularly scrumptious.  The evening before we walked around town and had dinner at a touristy ship on the water.  Views were great and the lobster tasty-but not like the night before.   Today we arrived in Camden, Maine ...

It's always good to see an architect when your life needs a redesign, so off we go to Maine and our friend Ken Chipman and his dearest Jennifer. He's been dropping in on us in Hawaii for years so we are returning the favor. Beautiful food, hikes and people. We even managed to surprise Ellen and Glen Hibbard and were treated to delicious lasagna! Mahalo!

... street shopping. We walked up and down in and around the cruise tourists, over hearing snippets of conversations such as; "Tell them we are off the cruise ship and they give us 10% discount." ( yes well that is off the 50% marked up for the privilege) to a possible "local" complaining to the friend; "Why do they always put the price of Lobsters up in the summer?" (Maybe to make some money from tourists) We noticed the price per pound of cooked lobster was $18/lb, MMMM ...

Today we went to maine. On the way to Maine we made a special stop by Red's Eats to get a famous lobster roll. They were really good and surprisingly good. We also had whoopee pies which are just souped up ho hos. Those were also a good treat. Then we made our way to Camden Hills to see the beautiful sites of Maine. It was really breath taking. Maine was more than i had inspected in a good way. We had a good time there and it was fun getting to see and spend time with Grant and Lisa. Hank

... are 3 married couples. 3 of you self-identified yourselves as Asian or Pacific Islander; 1 African-American; 3 Hispanic; 3 mixed and 2 American Indian or Alaskan Native (please note these demographics are based on your self-identification in the application process, and do not include those who elected not to self-identify their ethnicity).