Maine: September 2022 (Isle au Haut & Downeast)

September 10 – 12: Deer Isle and Isle au Haut

Deer Isle is an island south of the Blue Hill Peninsula, just west of Mount Desert Island. You drive across a narrow 2-lane bridge that takes you to the quaint and quirky world of Deer Isle, Stonington and the ferry over to Isle au Haut. Isle Au Haut is another section of Acadia National Park, which needed to be visited by Acadia National Park aficionados to get the elusive National Park Passport stamp. We hauled the rig over and camped for 2 nights to explore the area.

Deer Isle Bridge–yes, it was a bit unnerving to drive the rig across this bridge with oncoming traffic
Buoy display in Stonington
Stonington Harbor
Stonington Harbor — one of the top lobster producing harbors in Maine
More Stonington
Loved the boat “Clueless” with the lobsterman and his dog in the dingy
Did I say Deer Isle was quirky? This is Nervous Nellie’s where they sell jams and jellies, plus have sculptures!
It was like visiting an old west town with odd characters everywhere.
Free spirited characters hanging out at the local grocery store

July 11: We took a ferry over to Isle au Haut’s “Duck Harbor Landing” and hiked from south to north much of the length of the island to the town landing, where we picked up the ferry for a ride back to Stonington. The southern 2/3 of Isle au Haut is part of Acadia National Park.

Town Harbor, Isle au Haut from the ferry
Robinson Point on Isle au Haut
Duck Harbor, Isle au Haut
Fall is in the air!
Charming private property on the non-National Park side of Isle au Haut
Rocky shoreline of Isle au Haut
Standard Maine shoreline–volcanic rock right up to the shore
Isle au Haut beach
Standard beach with cobblestones and remains of crabs from the seagulls

Wandering Downeast

We took a drive Downeast, which is an area that starts SW of us in Ellsworth and goes up to the Canadian border along the coast. We finally got to check out the Wild Blueberry Heritage Center in Columbia Falls, ME that boasts being the Blueberry Capital of the World. From a Wild Maine Blueberry perspective, I believe they might be correct with that statement.

Then we wandered up to Jonesport, one of the many Downeast lobster towns along the coast. This whole area boasts these amazing and unique granite sculptures that were created in the early 2000’s at the Schoodic Institute by granite sculpturers around the world. Each town sponsered their own artist who created them a Maine granite sculpture for their town center. I think I will focus on capturing as many of the sculptures as I can next year.

Downeast Term:

As Colin Woodard explained in his book The Lobster Coast, “the prevailing winds on the Maine coast blow from the southwest in the warm months, so ships from Boston were able to run downwind as they sailed along Maine’s north-easterly-trending coast.” It follows that when the same ships returned to Boston, they were sailing upwind — and indeed, many Mainers still speak of going “up to Boston,” despite the fact that the city is approximately 50 miles south of Maine’s southern border.