Marshall Point Lighthouse

Marshall Point Light

Part of our trip to Camden this week was a side trip to Marshall Point Lighthouse in Port Clyde. You can either turn off Rt 1 onto Rt 131 at Montpelier (General Henry Knox Museum), or turn off Rt 1 and take Rt 73 past the Owl's Head Transportation Museum. Head out toward Port Clyde and follow the 'lighthouse' signs.

It was a clear, brisk day when we were there. But, I do love the smell of the salt air! The skies were brillaint blue, the kind that we get here in spring and early summer. We met up with a couple of teachers who were on vacation from Ohio. (We also saw them again the next day in Camden...small world here in the winter!)

If you are headed up or down Rt 1 between Freeport and Camden, the turnoff for Rt 131 is 58 miles from here. Out to Marshall Point from Rt 1 was another 12 miles. If you hit Port Clyde during lunch there are a couple of somewhat seasonal restaurants right in town. You can also catch the Monhegan Ferry at the dock.

Keeper's House

I'm working on a list of things to do on Rt 1 between Freeport and Camden, stay tuned! I'll include directions and hopefully some great photo op locations, such as this lighthouse keeper's cottage.

Traveling as we do in the quiet season, allows for picture taking that doesn't involve lots of cropping to remove random people!

White Cedar Inn Bed and Breakfast 178 Main Street Freeport, Maine 04032

www.whitecedarinn.com

Tommy Hilfiger opens in Freeport, Maine

The new Tommy Hilfiger store is now open on the corner of Main St and Bow St where Dansk/Lenox used to be.

Wow! They really did some nice renovation work on that space. New wood floors are just a start. The windows are showcasing their summer line-up with lots of sporty stripes in rich colors.

More news around Freeport...a new Jazz Club will be opening around May 1 on Depot St. No other details at this time, but more news as we hear it. In addition to the new club, there will also be a larger music venue when Buck's Naked BBQ opens in its new space near the corner of Desert Rd & Rt 1. Along with LL Bean's Summer Concert Series, the joint will be jumpin' this summer!

Six Stops on Rt 26 in Western Maine

As promised...here are six totally different things to do along Route 26, starting in Gray and ending in Paris. Click on the bold names below to go to their websites.

1. Maine Wildlife Park: open seasonally April to November, give or take. The park operates as a rehabilitation center for injured or abandoned wildlife. From Freeport, take Rt 1 south to Rt 115 in Yarmouth, follow signs to Gray, ME, turn right on Rt 26 and then follow signs to the Wildlife Park, about 30 minutes. $4-$6 admission. Special $50 photographer's pass allows access to behind the scenes areas for the purpose of photographing wildlife.


2. The Barn on 26 Antiques: 3 1/2 miles north of the village center in Gray. Call for winter hours. Follow directions above from Freeport, about 30 minutes.


3. Shaker Village at Sabbathday Lake, New Gloucester: The only active Shaker Community in existance. Call for visiting hours and classes. Follow directions from Freeport, continue on past Maine Wildlife Park, about 35-30 minutes from Freeport.


4. Oxford Plains Speedway, Oxford: opens in April. Getcher motor running...stock car racing is on tap all summer long! Approx 1 hour from Freeport.


5. Oxford County Fair, Oxford: September 7-13, 2008 OK, not quite on Rt 26, but close enough! Everything you expect from a county fair and then some! Approx 1 hour from Freeport.


6. Western Maine Mineral Adventures, Paris: Educational tours, digs and keep what you find adventures! Learn about Maine gemstones such as tourmaline and beryl. Call for hours and to book tours. About 1 1/2 hours from Freeport.

So, there you have it...six completely different family or couples' adventures along Rt 26 from Gray to Paris, Maine. And that is just a start! Stop in each town along the way and sample the local cuisine and hidden treasures. Let us know what you find!

One side trip to take along the way...Once you hit Norway, Maine, hang a left on Rt 118 and head toward Lynchville (14 miles according to the sign). There, at the intersection of Rts 5 and 35, you can take a photo that shows what an international bon vivant you are! And you don't even need a passort to show all your friends just how far you went on your summer vacation.

Bon voyage!

"Olympia Snow" world's tallest snowwoman, Bethel, Maine

Fondly named 'Olympia Snow' after our senator Olympia Snowe, the world's tallest snowwoman was dedicated at a ceremony on Friday, February 29, 2008. The impressive snowwoman was built with the efforts of the townspeople of Bethel, Maine.

Schoolchildren painted the 8' long 'carrot' nose and helped put together the hat and scarf that adorn Olympia. Her arms are decorated, 27' tall (long at this point) evergreens. Those gorgeous red lips are painted tractor tires. Her stunning black eyes are also tractor tires. Ditto the au courant 'buttons' on her de monde 'dress'.

Towering over the surrounding buildings, Olympia is stunningly decked out with expressive eyelashes made from skis and a charming 6' snowflake pendant. Olympia was predated by 'Angus, King of the Mountain' in 1999. Angus topped out at 112' tall, 10 feet shorter than Olympia.

The folks of Bethel hope the folks of Guinness will open up a category for 'World's Tallest Snowwoman'. In 1999, Angus, King of the Mountain was named 'World's Tallest Snowman'. That record still stands today! With the debut of Olympia, Bethel may lay claim to the tallest family of snowpeople in the world!

It was a great drive out there today, beautiful blue skies and bearable temps around 25. If you haven't been to Maine to ski this year, come soon! There's at least an extra 3' more of snow in Bethel than there is here in Freeport, and we are nowhere near losing our snow cover anytime soon!

There is no fee to stop by and see Olympia (how could they charge, you can see her clear across town!) and the Chamber has a small souvenir stand set up on site. There they have t-shirts, sweatshirts, tote bags and postcards.

From here it was a drive of about 1 hour and 45 minutes. There are plenty of shops and restaurants in Bethel, so come and make a day of it! We took Rt 26 and there are lots of things to do along the way. More on that on another day.

6 tips to reduce your carbon emissions before your vacation

After receiving the Environmental Leadership Certificate last November, we've been on the lookout for ways to save electricity, fuel oil and water but didn't spend a whole lot of time thinking of ways to save on gas. Because the grocery store here is less than 2 miles away, it isn't a big deal for us to stop on the way home from a doctor's appointment or other 'day out' and pick up what we need.

Heck, my friend Jacqueline (of Jacqueline's Tea Room fame) and I walk to the grocery store almost every afternoon. So, I don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about driving.

Tonight I got to thinking of ways to save on carbon emissions in preparation for vacation travel this year. Lots of people, ourselves included, haven't bought into the whole carbon offsets idea where you buy your way out of actually DOING anything to offset your actual carbon emissions.

So, on our website I have a page showing what we've done in the past year to earn the Environmental Leadership Certificate and I added a section on how to 'offset' vacation travel.

I hope you'll take a look and try at least one of the options. Personally, I only drive about once/week. If I can't walk to wherever it is I want to go, I seriously consider if I really need to go there. I just realized I've had my car for 5 years this summer and it has 30,000 miles on it. Total.

Obviously, not everyone lives in the situation I do where I can walk to work (10 feet) and to shopping (a couple of hundred feet) and to the post office, church, library and pretty much anything else I want. But there are ways we can all get healthier, lose weight, feel better and save a little corner of the planet at the same time. Hope you'll read the webpage and we'll get to talk about it when we see you this year!


If you're in the area at the end of March and into April, we hope you'll take the opportunity to tour a LEED certified house in Freeport. Tours will be held Wednesday- Sunday and different speakers will be on hand during the week to explain how the house was constructed and other aspects of LEED certification.

Retiring to Maine

OK, I'll admit it, I thought about retiring to Maine before I moved here. Figured buying a business here would get me 4 hours closer to the beach (from Vermont, where we lived) and that much closer to the place I've wanted to live since 1973.

I came here on a vacation in the summer of 1973 to the 50th anniversary party of the grandparents of the guy I was dating. We spent one day at Popham Beach and was sure this was where I wanted to live. And this was back in the days before the Clean Water Act, when the Androscoggin River was world famous for catching fire from the chemicals being dumped into it.

Still...the ocean was where I wanted to live and because I can't stand the humidity, I will happily live on the coast up north.

Which brings me to retiring in Maine. I hope this is where I'll retire, although there are grumblings from the better half that Charleston (SC) is the ONLY place to live. Obviously, the Clean Water Act did its job. The Androscoggin (and all Maine rivers) are no longer national scandals. The air is clean, the water is much cleaner and work continues to make it more so.

Maine leads in many areas of being ecologically aware and friendly. (And we're keeping up our end of the bargain at the Inn, getting the Environmental Leadership Certificate in Hospitality last November.) Projects are under way across the state to harness the energy of the tides to create electricity, to use solar and wind power electricity generation and many other 'green' energy solutions are in the works. Retiring in Maine does not mean retiring from thinking and doing, it means being a part of the ever-changing political, economic and social scene of this country.

If you've had the dream to retire in Maine, I hope you'll check the retirement page I've created with a list of retirement options in Maine. Most of the retirement communities I listed are active, vibrant social settings. If you think of retirement community as an 'old folks' home' you could probably get a better perspective by reading some of the websites I list. But, if you're adamant that you want a multi-generational community, I've also listed a realtor's name on the page. Jim is a friend of ours and, if i can talk the other half into staying here Maine, Jim will be our go-to guy when we start looking for our next home. (In case you're wondering...that won't be for another 7 years at least!)

Popham Beach...it's not just for summer!

We've made it a tradition since we moved here to go to the beach on Christmas Day and New Year's Day (and as many other winter days that we can get away!). We're not the only Mainiacs who do this! Quite often, parking is down the road and around the corner, there are so many people on the beach.


Today, Christmas Eve, it was a bit quieter. We were almost the only walkers on the sands. We arrived as the tide was going out so not late enough that we could walk out to the Fox Islands. That is always a highlight of the day!


There is something very calming about walking near the ocean. The pounding surf has a way of driving out the little voices that are always niggling at me to 'coulda, shoulda, woulda'. The wind was so strong today I could lean right into it and be held up!

Because of all the rain last night and the full moon tonight, the tide line was very high up on the beach. There was quite a bit more erosion, too, than we are used to seeing.


Popham Beach is our favorite beach to go to with Bre. Dogs are welcome from Nov 1 - Mar 31. Leashes are required. Another great beach to walk on is Ogunquit Beach, but that's a tad far to drive. Popham is 30 miles from here, about a 45 minute drive. There are no amenities to speak of, so if you want food and drinks, we suggest stopping here in town before you head out.

A walk on the beach is good for the soul.