Following the signs to explore more of Maine

We are way behind in getting travel posts published this summer because we're having too much fun traveling! So we won't be confused about when each "wandering" happened, we'll start each blog with its actual date.

August 14, 2022

We're still camped near the coast of Maine, and we don't have a plan for what we're going to do on this Sunday. So we've decided to just "follow the signs" and see where the day takes us. Our first stop was to a little Methodist Church in the little town of Union, Maine. We confirmed the time for worship from the sign in front of the church. After Covid kept us from actually attending a church service for more than a year, it's nice to get back to finding a different church every week this summer. It's sad to see that we were the youngest people at that church this morning. 

After church, we headed towards the coast. Wait! There's a sign that says, "Hot Nuts!" We had no idea what that meant, but we made a u-turn and then parked at the Round Pond General Store. They've been selling general merchandise at this general store for more than a century. We came out with our snack for the day--hot peanuts in the shell.

We headed on down the road in search of Pemaquid Lighthouse. But when we saw a sign that there was a charge to enter the park, we changed our minds. Besides, it looked a little crowded at the lighthouse anyway.

We saw a sign that pointed to free parking next door, so we parked and then walked out to the rocky coast line.

From there we could get much more dramatic pictures of the lighthouse from the rocks.

We're glad we saw the sign that led us away from the lines inside the crowded park, and then to this much better view. Views like this remind us that we are fortunate to get to wander God's wonders here in Maine.

When we were at the general store earlier, we saw a sign advertising an ice cream social in the tiny village of Round Pond. We followed the directions on the sign.

We made a donation to the community center, and joined in the ice cream festivities. It was delicious blueberry ice cream, a fitting Maine dessert.

From there, we followed another lead to go to New Harbor, Maine, and eat at Shaw's Fish and Lobster. We were sad to see that the sign out front said they were closed on Sunday. This is proof that not all the signs we follow are good news. But we took a picture anyway because Shaw's was a setting in Kevin Costner's movie, "Message in a Bottle."

The next stop was in the town of Damariscott. We were driving through town when we spotted two signs. They let us know about the "Live Music" and "Pier Party" happening today. That sounds like a personal invitation to join the fun.

Sure enough, there was a dance floor and a live band and lots of people already enjoying the fun. The line to buy food was long, and standing in it would mean that we couldn't dance. So we didn't eat, but we did dance to a few songs.

The pier is located on the Damariscotta River, and we had a lovely view of the water when walking across the bridge. That's when we saw another sign that was an advertisement for kayaking trips on the river to see the oyster farms in this area.

It was too late to join a tour today, and we know that our inflatable kayak doesn't work well with razor-sharp oysters. But we were curious about these river oyster farms. This river joins the ocean just a few miles from here, so it is a perfect blend of salinity when the Damariscotta river water joins with the tidal flow of the ocean. The sign we read explained that 80 percent of Maine oysters come out of this river. We drove up-river until we found a farm. 

Those metal containers are where the oysters are raised. We didn't get to kayak around them, but we were glad we saw the sign earlier that let us know they existed. By following the information on the sign, it sent us on an interesting hunt to find them.

We followed the Demariscotta River back to our campground. Catherine, our campground owner sits in front of the office, and always stops to find out how our day was. Today was a day of reading signs and following leads, and seeing where those signs took us as we explored lesser-known parts of Maine.