New Harbor

      Today Durelle and Cindy took a drive down to New Harbor for a sentimental visit. I stayed here with the pup, but Cindy took some great pictures so I decided to share them in my blog. One of the features there is the Rachel Carson salt pond. It was there long before she wrote Silent Spring or before there was a salt pond named after her. A salt pond is formed by a barrier of a ring of rocks, earth and kelp that lies between high tide and low tide. When the tide comes in, much of it is captured by the barrier and stays there as the tide goes out. It's a wonderful place to observe all sorts of sea life. It also warms up in the sun so that it is the warmest ocean water in Maine. In the 80's I used it like my own personal hot tub after a day of clearing logs and brush from Gene and Ruth Gardner's cabin view.

     The Gardner cabin, aka "the Landry cottage" is just uphill from the salt pond. As a result, we have many pleasant memories of the area. We have been visiting there since 1978.
     As I have posted many times before, New Harbor is a working lobsterman's harbor with few pleasure boats.

     Another icon on route 1 is Moody's diner. Although their menu is not very imaginative, their pies are still special. So, they stopped.

     The landmark, of course, is Pemaquid Point and its lighthouse. 

     Cindy also captured the bed of petunias between the two halves of the parking lot at Shaws.

Belfast Harbor

     Tuesday night was a pleasant, but smaller, happy hour. Many folks have left. I noticed that the sky was filled with high-altitude alto-cirrus clouds. These are the wispy, feathery things that often preface a storm by 48 hours. They are composed of ice crystals. The whole sky was covered with them, but by the time I retrieved the camera they had diminished.

     At the same time, in the west, there were some puffy alto cumulus that looked like popcorn as they were illuminated by the already descended sun which had disappeared behind the trees.

     As I said, it was a pleasant but smaller happy hour. Notice a couple of relaxed dogs.

     Every afternoon, when I drive across the Route 1 bridge over the Passagassawaukeag River, I say that when the sun is low and the tide is high, I'll have to come down for a picture of the Belfast Harbor. It's a tough walk for me to park and get out to the center of the bridge. Cindy and I explored options to drop me off in the center of the bridge...not safe. So we did it the hard way with my taking a rest at every power pole. Here's the result of my work.

     We have a couple of big tug boats stationed here.

     We only have a couple of more weeks and we plan to enjoy them.

What's going on at the shipyard?

     We routinely wander through the shipyard when we go down town just to see what's going on. Today they had a two masted schooner on the lift. It was a big one,so I decided to take a few pictures. Note that this is post #750.

     The skinny guy by the front wheel is Dick Roth. Some of these rigs are big! There are a number of other boats in the yard in various states of renovation or repair. Lately there have been some big catamarans (4BR, 4Bath) and even a trimaran.

     I took a shot of the lift from under a catamaran. It is astonishing how much access the general public is allowed.

     As Dick and I were leaving the yard, we spotted a beauty tied up at the dock. The wood and brightwork just sparkled...and have you ever seen a smokestack cleaner than that?

     The services provided by the Front Street Shipyard have brought a nice clientele (and their dollars) to Belfast.

Schoodic Point

     Acadia National Park occupies parts of three of Maine's many southward extending peninsulas. Cadillac Mountain is on the middle one, but on the tip of the eastern one is Schoodic Point. It is a granite-clad outcropping that does not have any other land between it and the Gulf of Maine and the North Atlantic. Therefore, a North Atlantic storm has a thousand miles to build some high seas before they come crashing ashore against that immovable granite.
     So, while most of the Atlantic coast watched with great trepidation as hurricane Jose churned it way up the east coast, Mainers were eagerly anticipating another great show at Schoodic. The storm stalled out south of Cape Cod, so the waves did not reach the heights that were hoped for, but it still made for a good day for a Schoodic trip.

     Coincidentally, it was a day that we were scheduled to meet up with a cousin of Durelle's and her husband, Pam and Jay Anderson, who are Californians making their first visit to Maine. Originally we had planned to take a leisurely drive along the mid-coast of Maine pointing out some of our favorite photo-ops. After the day of touring, Durelle's brother and wife, Mart and Ann Grover, would drive over from their NH campground and join us all for supper. When we told the Andersons about the Schoodic situation, they jumped at the opportunity.

     That's Pam on the left capturing a picture of the exploding surf.

     The Park Rangers were prominent in keeping foolish tourists from venturing too close to the edge where they would be at risk from a rogue wave.

     Later we joined up with Mart and Ann and had a nice supper at the Whale's Tooth in Lincolnville.

      So, while it was not one of the best shows that Schoodic has ever produced, it provided a nice reunion for three Grover cousins and their "outlaws".

Frogmore Stew Redux

     A few days ago we did another double recipe (two pot) version of the Frogmore Stew. This time the pictures are from Wendy Boucher, who photographs food as well as she makes it. Since I was making two pots, I made one regular spice and the other with a bit less cayenne. Notice that the butcher paper covering the table says, "decaf" while the other says, "regular".

     As you know Frogmore stew is a communal event. Here's a series of pictures with the various ingredients going into the pots. The next picture shows the primordial fluid in which everything is cooked.

     Now we start to add the ingredients. The potatoes go first.

     You can see that I'm supervising with a beer nearby. Fifteen minutes later the sausage goes in.

     After another five minutes, the corn goes in.

     Ten more minutes, and it's time for the shrimp. They only go a few minutes until they are pink. Meanwhile it is a pleasant wait for the rest of the folks.

     Finally it is time to pour

   

     And the end of the day looked like this:

     The recipe is fairly simple, but it helps to do all the prep work the day before and refrigerate the ingredients in ziplock bags.
     The potful of liquid and seasonings includes:

1 Gal. +/- water
3-4 large lemons halved and squeezed (lemons go in the pot)
2-3 large white onions, sliced
1/2 cup Real Lemon juice
4T Old Bay Seasoning
1C Zatarain's Crab Boil, powder
1 bag Zatarain's Boil-n-Bag
5-6 capfuls Zatarain's concentrated liquid crab boil
8-10 bay leaves
1 tsp. Cayenne Pepper
1 can of beer (optional)

Bring the pot to a boil and add the following four ingredients as scheduled:

5 lbs red potatoes, "de-eyed" and halved if necessary
Six ears of corn, quartered...frozen "minis" work well
3-4 lbs smoked sausage or kielbasa, cut on a diagonal to bite size
5 lbs large shrimp, cleaned and deveined, EZ peel, tail on, lightly salted w/sea salt

The clock starts when the pot boils. potatoes-15 min.-sausage-5 min-corn-10 min.-shrimp-3 min. or when pink. Cover tables with butcher paper or newspaper, strain and pour/ladle ingredients directly onto the paper. When done eating, roll up the whole package and discard. Be sure to involve the whole party in the adding of ingredients.

A large lobster boil

     On the first day of Labor Day weekend there was a lobster boil for the whole campground. All the campground staff and some campers pitched in to erect a pavilion style tent, haul and arrange picnic tables, and collect lobster cookers and propane tanks. The campers were generous in the supply of assorted side dishes and deserts. With such teamwork and Debra's leadership the fare came to just $7.00 per person!

     I haven't been to every lobster feed in the world, but for those I have been to, a perennial problem is the fact that the cooked lobster retains a lot of water - primarily in the claws. The result, when you start eating the beast, is a surprising amount of water in your plate, soggy potato chips and too many opportunities to spill in your lap. What Debra is doing in the picture above is snipping the tips off the claws and draining the water before serving them...a nice touch.

     I believe the crew cooked six dozen lobsters. Wendy Boucher saved a number of carcasses to make stock to use on Sunday for an afternoon snack of lobster mac'n'cheese. As soon as we finished eating, it began a steady rain...the aftermath of Harvey, I guess. Good timing Wendy.
     The "portrait" shaped pictures are from Jackie Fare.

The Lumberman's Museum

     In Patten, ME, about an hour north of Lincoln, is a wonderful museum to the memory of those intrepid foresters that brought the millions of trees to market during the twenties and thirties. At the heart of the industry were the many Maine lumber camps scattered around within sight of Mt. Katahdin. On Wednesday, Dick Roth, Phil Andrews and I visited that museum. Phil is an old-time Maine forester, so we had our own personal docent.

     There is a visitor's center with many interesting displays and an informative and entertaining movie to set the stage. The bulk of the museum is contained in a collection of actual log cabins. The primary cabin was a two-part structure with a bunkhouse on one end and a cook shack and dining room on the other. The cook (the highest paid guy in the camp) and his helpers served four meals a day. They consisted of: tea, canned beef, ham, beans, donuts, and cookies.

     Look at the rows of charcoal colored spots. These were bean hole pits. There are sixteen of them here. Each one had a fire in it, followed by the lowering of a cast iron pot of beans and salt pork into the hole. It was then covered and let to rest for a half a day. Beans were an everyday meal. 

     Woe be it to the cook's helper who did not keep the wood box full.

     Horses were a big part of hauling the logs out of the woods. Blacksmith's, therefore, were essential to  the operation.

     

     

Obviously, I don't have any photographs of the log drivers doing their calked boot ballet on the logs as they floated downstream to the mill in the Spring. We did, however, see a number of movie clips that stagger the imagination. There sure were a lot of ways to get hurt in that business. There were some boats used in the harvest. They were specialized to the extent that the screw and the rudder had to be protected so that the boat could pass over the logs.

          An interesting legacy of the era comes from the invention by Al Lombard in 1901 of a steam-engined, continuous track driven, ski steered behemoth of a tractor to pull a train of log laden sleds out of the woods. They even had watering machines (Zambonis ?) to ice the road surface. That track propulsion Lombard invented enabled the WWI tanks and generations of construction equipment.

 On the way back to Belfast we toured a few miles of the scenic loop of the newly designated Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument. It was an overcast day but the views were still impressive.