Maine/Vermont Day 5-6: Lobstah, Lobstah, Lobstah

Here we are in the Easternmost point of the U.S., the first place to get daybreak ... and we sleep through it.  Oh well.  I can't imagine it looks much different, even though it's hitting us before every American billionaire, working stiff, and President Obama.  I'll just take it on faith.  I'm on vacation.

Eventually we did get up and ate breakfast, then headed for Quoddy Head State Park.  We see our first lighthouse there.  It's giant, candy-coloured, and largely unnecessary (thanks to GPS, which largely cuts through fog).  But it's a tourist magnet.  At first I thought it was just the symbolism - when you wander through the foggy parts of life, when decisions are far from clear, you want a light that says, "Go wherever you want, but not here!"  I guess there is something inherently beautiful about a lighthouse.  Nothing in architecture is quite like it.

Amy and I hiked along the coast.  My favorite attraction was the peat bog.  It was set inland about a quarter of a mile, and so it's called a coastal plateau bog.  I didn't know much about bogs.  It's one of the four kinds of wetlands, along with swamps, marshes and fens.  Basically, a bog's water is too acidic, which makes it hard to grow things in and hard to decompose the dead stuff.  The plants just grow a little, then die, then sit on top of other dead plants, unable to melt much further.  What does survive are really weird species of carnivorous and out-of-place plants like apple-berry.  It's surreal and colorful.  It's like Dante Seventh Circle of Hell, with dead plants piled on top of one another instead of dead people.  More peaceful, though.

And so we returned our campsite, made some fettucini and salad, then built a nice fire from some wood we got in a stand along the way.  Amy said this was the best time of year to camp - no one hogging the showers or the laundry room. And that's cool, but it's mostly my camping experience anyway.  Out there in South Dakota, it was all solitude and I loved that.  All you could hear were the squirrels slowly dying of starvation.

The next day we broke camp, and I cured my persistent headache with a Coca Cola.  (It's like "Oh yeah.  I have a caffeine addiction.  I was so busy drinking coffee I didn't notice.")  We got a tip to go to Pemaquid Point lighthouse, because you can actually go up in it.  The view was really fantastic, as you can see here:

The surf was deafening here, the light was 150 years old and really cool.  Turns out that this was the second lighthouse built here.  The first one, in 1830, crumbled almost immediately because they used sea water in the mortar mixture.  "Pretty stupid," the museum keeper shook his head.  It sounded pretty resourceful to me!  Good thing I don't build lighthouses.

The museum in the lighthouse living quarters housed relics from the surrounding area.  A "stuffed" 22 lb lobster looked down on you from a display case.  My niece had a stuffed lobster when she was little - it wasn't nearly as scary.  In my favorite photo, a five year old girl on a dock was flanked by two lobsters that, when balanced on the tip of their tail, were as big as she was.  I'll bet she had wicked nightmares!

Our camp site in New Harbor Maine was almost deserted.  An older couple from Ohio found us wandering around, and asked us where we were from.  "Ithaca?  Home of the Moosewood?"  Their faces lit up.  They talked rapturously about their dog-eared Moosewood Cookbook and their organic garden.  Foodies ... I love them!  We asked them where to eat and they said "Shaw's Fish and Lobster Wharf for dinner, and The Cupboard for breakfast.  Best breakfast this side of New Orleans."

So we went to Shaw's, and it was all that.  Talk about fresh!  The seafood was still dripping wet from the ocean.  The menu is all "Market Price", and if they didn't have it fresh-off-the-boat, it wasn't available.  I had salmon with bbq sauce.  Best salmon I've ever bitten into - just a little cruncy, no rubberiness at all, just flaky and mild all the way.  Amy had a lobster roll - basically tuna salad with lobster instead of tuna, but on a New England hot dog roll.  Tasty!  We finished off with a couple of Maine wild blueberry desserts - cheesecake for me, pie for her.  Maine blueberries are luxurious after a steady diet of giant, watery New York and Jersey blueberries.  Outtasite!

We sunk into our camp, very satisfied, and read our Kindles by the campfire.  One of our few remaining neighbors has a 6 foot tall bonfire next to their RV, which seems pretty superfluous to me.  But hey.  Live and let live.   I'm relaxed and pondering this state of Vacationland, as they call Maine.  We'll definitely be back.  But first we have some biking to do in Vermont...