Well, leaving Bar Harbor this morning was bittersweet. Leaving was sad because: 1. it's such an incredibly beautiful area; 2. it's very nice having a room with an ocean view; 3. the weather was about as nice as nice can get (sunny, clear blue sky, dry air, breeze coming off the ocean); 4. no more maids to clean our room and make our beds while we're out during the day; and 5. no more picking a different restaurant each day for breakfast, lunch and/or dinner. But taking off for home was sweet because: 1. there are hubbies; 2. also kids; and 3. even kitties. The latter 3 definitely outweighed the former 5, so off we took heading south.
We did make a stop in Rockland to check out the current exhibit at the Farnsworth Art Museum's Wyeth Center. Bev and I are huge fans of all the Wyeths and are particularly enamored of Andrew Wyeth's watercolors. This was Bev's first visit to the museum and she seemed to enjoy it and was very well-behaved. I made her take the elevator to the second floor (the Wyeth Center is actually a beautiful old church that has been converted to an amazing art gallery) because Bob & I were so impressed by its size when we visited several years ago. The elevator is so large, it's like a room. It used to have a long bench along one wall so you could sit down while you traveled up and down (no bench today though).
Bev and I particularly wanted to study the composition and brush techniques of the watercolors done by Andrew and Jamie Wyeth. One of the new filter techniques that we have been using with some of our photos closely resembles watercolors and since our photo subjects are quite often similar to what the Wyeths painted, we think some of our photos resemble their work. Check out the photo of Marshall Point Light on our homepage at www.salmonfallsphotography.com if you want to see why we think that. Coincidentally, Marshall Point Light is located in Point Clyde, ME where the Wyeth family owned a summer home.
We also had an opportunity to study and enjoy several of Robert Indiana's large steel sculptures from a previous Farnsworth exhibit. They were displayed outdoors in the gardens surrounding the museum, and there was a blue version of his famous LOVE sculpture located in a small park in downtown Rockland. Bev took several photos and if you're lucky, she'll decide to choose those photos to post with today's blog. Indiana's sculptures are always interesting, intriguing, beautiful, and thought-provoking.
After our museum stop, I took Bev to The Brown Bag (TBB) restaurant for lunch. Bob & I ate breakfast at TBB every single morning on our last trip to Rockland. All their bakery items, including the homemade bread used to make their sandwiches, are made right there on site. So you can only imagine what the smell of freshly baking bread does to one's appetite as you enter the front door.
Bob says my blog occasionally reads more like a foodie blog than a photography blog, but I know people love to know about good restaurants and the good things those restaurants serve. So here's the low-down on lunch. I had a turkey BLT with cucumber slices. TBB roasts its own turkey and they shred the turkey meat and then pile it up high on the bread. I love turkey sandwiches and this one was A+++. Bev had a Reuben - a favorite of both of us, and she also loved her sandwich. Sweet potato fries for Bev, potato fries for me, and I had a small green salad. On the way out, we stopped over in the bakery and I purchased the most gorgeous blueberry pie for Bob and me to enjoy this weekend (it even has small stars made out of pie crust on the top of the pie - a very nice nod to Memorial Day), 3 Hermit bars for Bob (he DOES love his Hermits), and a loaf of their gorgeous white bread which was still warm because it had come out of the oven less than an hour before. Oh, I know I could have bought healthy bread - oatmeal, or 7-grain, or bran, or one of those hippie fiber breads - but sometimes there's nothing like the perfect loaf of dense homemade white bread. So get over it. If you're ever in Rockland, please, please, please, for your own pleasure, go to TBB for breakfast or lunch. You will thank me after.
After we loaded up the car with our newly-purchased baked goods, we departed Rockland and headed straight for home. Except, well . . . we passed this little farm stand not far out of Rockland and they had a sign out announcing the sale of their own freshly-picked strawberries. Late May in Maine! Almost too good to be true - our local strawberries down here in Southeast MA don't even ripen until June. But we pulled a U-turn and drove straight back to the barn. And indeed, they did have real honest-to-goodness local RIPE strawberries for sale. Seems all those warm days they've been having even up in Maine (days with temps up in the 80s & 90s) pushed the strawberries to ripen much earlier than normal. I did just eat one when I brought them into the house when I got home. They are GOOD and SWEET.
Here's a small lesson on things that are Maine. One of the most beautiful and enjoyable sights Bev and I enjoyed all week were the fields and hills and gardens just overflowing with lupines in near full bloom - blue, lavender, pink, and white in color, they are so incredibly beautiful to see. Like the strawberries, we found out from a local Mainer that the lupines are also blooming much earlier than normal this year. Anyway, Bev and I were pronouncing the word as if it sound like lou-pines. A very nice lady at the Jordan Pond gift shop in ANP informed us that the locals call them lou-pins (as in safety-pins). So we have been corrected and are now pronouncing lupine just like the locals.
I do need to make a little confession here. I was pinning (not pining) for some lupines to take home to make a bouquet for my dining room table. I have never seen lupines growing wild in Massachusetts, so I figured having some in a vase to see each time I walked through my dining room would be a nice reminder of our trip to Bar Harbor and Maine. So yesterday, while en-route to the Atlantic Brewing Company, Bev and I scouted out a place where, the next morning as we left town for home, we could "borrow" some lupines to take with us. And we found the perfect spot - a little dirt road that went in off Rt. 3 to a small field where someone had piled up a bunch of rocks. All around the edge of the field of rocks, lupines were growing everywhere.
So after we left our hotel this morning, we got to where the little dirt road was located, backed in a ways off the highway, and we did some picking. We had a tall, narrow cooler that we'd brought with us from home and we added water near halfway to the top before we left the hotel. Bob had a small wooden case in the trunk that contained a jack-knife, and no local cops drove by while I was picking (Bev was out front between the front of the car and the edge of road taking some photos of the lupines out there - she was my decoy), and I was able to pick several dozen stems of those absolutely beautiful flowers. I was SO happy.
But, our little field had only a couple white lupines and no pink ones. So later on on our way home, we spotted a beautiful hillside of lupines with plenty of pinks and whites. We pulled over and I got out to pick some so I'd have a variety of colors for my flower arrangement. Well, there was a drainage ditch off the side of the road and at the bottom of what was really a very steep hill. When I went to jump over the ditch, I slipped on some moss on the other side and fell nearly flat on my face. The hill was so steep and the moss was so slippery, I couldn't get any traction to make my way up to where the lupines were. Someone driving by must have thought I looked pretty darn hilarious because they gave me a nice beep, beep, beep of their car horn. Bev got out and walked right up the hill to the pink ones and cut us enough for some added color and I sat on the side of the road and attempted to clean all the mud off my left-foot white sneaker. All turned out well - at least in that no cops drove by and we didn't end up in trouble.
I will say in our defense that we don't really think it's a big deal to be borrowing Maine lupines to bring home. We found out they're considered an invasive species in Maine and the National Park Service even has a program to try and eradicate all the lupines in Acadia National Park. We'd like to think we were helping the NPS with their eradication program.
And now, our spring road trip for 2010 has ended. Bev and I are now ensconced safely back in our homes. Bob and the kitties were very happy to see me. Bob was happy to see the variety-pack of Atlantic Brewing Company beers I brought him home. The kitties didn't get any presents, but then, they don't know the difference. I tried to explain to them about the two Bar Harbor stores that sell all dog stuff and how there wasn't a single store with cat stuff, but they didn't seem to much care. They were just glad I was home to scratch their ears and give them some good petting.
Now that we're back from Bar Harbor, we won't be writing our blog every day, or even every week. But we will occasionally be blogging about day road trips or upcoming Salmon Falls happenings. We do have a gallery show coming up at the end of June at the Hughes/Donahue Gallery in Taunton. It's a show devoted solely to photography. And although several other photographers will be exhibiting their work, the gallery owners are featuring Bev's and my work. So there will be news on our blog of the show as it comes together.
We hope you've enjoyed reading about our Bar Harbor trip and you'll check back for new posts to read about more of our adventures.
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