7/20/08 More of that Crazy Photographer at Work

7/20/08 Photographer On the Loose at Pemaquid

7/20/08 Still More Pemaquid

7/20/08 More Pemaquid

Rodney took one picture of me sitting here and then the bird flew into view and he was able to capture it on the second shot. No, that bird was not Photoshopped into this photo. I took one of Rodney in the same place on his iPhone but there's no bird in his shot.

7/20/08 Pemaquid Point Lighthouse

Where to after Wiscasset? Pemaquid! Or Pemaquid Point Lighthouse to be more exact. How did we decide? Rodney had my Gazeteer and just looked at what was nearby. This was a place he had been to in high school and it's a classic Maine landmark. It's even on the cover of one of Charles Kuralt's book about traveling America. And it turns out, it is THE lighthouse that is on the Maine state quarter. I actually blogged about it a year ago and mentioned that it was a place I should be sure to go to. I had forgotten that it was only just restored a year ago. If we had come last July it would've been surrounded by scaffolding and not nearly as gorgeous to look at. Sure it was rainy/drizzly, but we were so nearby and sometimes photos turn out great on days without direct sunshine and so we weren't going to let the rain dampen our spirits. We drove east out of Wiscasset to Newcastle and Damariscotta and then went south to Pemaquid.

When we arrived, the gates were open but the gatehouse where you pay to enter was closed and so was the little museum. We didn't even have to pay to enter. Oh the double advantages of a rainy day. It turned out the Pemaquid even on a drizzly day is so gorgeous and fascinating that we ended up staying over an hour. We climbed all over the rocks that surround it (it was low tide) and took photos like crazy.

7/20/08 Photographer at Work in Wiscasset

I love traveling with a photographer. I learned to appreciate the art form traveling with my sister. (She used to be a photography enthusiast, then she became an amateur photographer and now she's really good and may even make a go of the professional side as a hobby/career.) It's fun to watch them at work and it's fun to learn from them as well. What's been a blast for me traveling with Rodney is that he has an iPhone camera, too.

[For me, the iPhone is my only camera now. I lost my great digital camera that my family gave me for Christmas 2005. I was hiking in autumn 2007 and it fell out of my pocket. I bought a cheap replacement but didn't like it (I've since passed that camera on to my dad). I found myself using the iPhone camera more and more, part out of desperation 'cuz I had nothing else and part out of frustration when the batteries on the other one were dead or I didn't have it with me and part out of convenience 'cuz I always had my iPhone with me. I really grew fond of the little camera inside my iPhone. It has manual zoom and no flash but it's very portable and takes great advantage of ambient light. If you can see it with your eyes, it will show up in the photo.]

Here he is taking pictures of a display next to Red's Eats.

Here's my photo of the same stuff:

He showed me his cool photo that he created and then let me stand in the exact same place and showed me how to tilt my camera the same way and since we had matching cameras, when I pressed the button, I had a photo very similar to his artwork. It's better than paint by numbers! Here's the photo-a-la-Rodney (I now have it set as the wallpaper on my iPhone.)

7/20/08 Wiscasset

From Belgrade we went to Augusta and stopped at Wendy's (I know . . . not very Maine-ish when there's one in every town, but there's not one in Farmington and it was convenient and cheap and we were starving). Over lunch, Rodney laid out some possibilities of where to go next and we decided to head to Hallowell, a quaint section of Augusta with more fun shops like Belgrade, and then to play it by ear. We got to Hallowell and between the drizzle and the late hour on Sunday afternoon, the shops just didn't look very appealing OR they were already closed. So instead of driving TO Hallowell, we drove THROUGH Hallowell, and that's where our adventure really began.

We continued south on ME 27 and soon were in Wiscasset. Grace had told me about Wiscasset and about Red's Eats. She knows my fondness for lobster rolls and theirs are among the best. Do a Google search and you'll see rave reviews from CNN, Travel and Leisure, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, Paupered Chef, NPR, Chowhound, and on and on. There are stories of people waiting 2 or more hours in line for Red's. It's just a simple lobster shack on the corner of Main Street and Water Street. I knew this was a place I wanted to go. But Rodney doesn't like seafood and we had just eaten a late lunch, so I was willing to forgo it. It turns out, there's much more to Wiscasset than just Red's. We had a great time plundering around and, imagine this, taking photos. I even bought more Christmas gifts!

It turns out there are 2 advantages to going sightseeing on a rainy/drizzly day: 1. the streets are wet which always makes for a great photo shoot (per Rodney, the photographer, who says look at any car commercial and you'll notice that the road is always wet), and 2. the line at Red's was VERY short. I knew from all the hype that their lobster roll was basically a whole lobster taken out of the shell and put on a piece of bread served with drawn butter or mayonnaise on the side, so I could save it for later and it would still be delicious. So we decided (I asked and Rodney agreed) to be part of the hype without the hassle and I got a lobster roll-to-go from Red's Eats.

7/20/08 Celebration Tour #3 Begins in Belgrade, Maine

It's a rainy, drizzly Sunday afternoon and Rod calls to say, "What are you doing today?" :-) And so began Celebration Tour #3. We were actually in the car driving out of Wilton and still didn't know where we were going. We just knew we were going. We decide to head to Belgrade on the way to Augusta and see where destiny leads us after that.

Belgrade is a cute, quaint little town in the Belgrade Lakes region. It's definitely an area of some fancier "camps" . . . it's more of a destination for "persons from away" and "flatlanders" (mostly rich people from Massachusetts), though some locals do live there year-round. We went to a gallery of arts and crafts that had really great stuff and then to a great tourist trap that had a mix of locally-created stuff and stuff made in China but painted with lobsters or blueberries or lighthouses, thus making it appear to be local. I had a field day but was very good to only pick up two things for the new apartment and the rest were Christmas gifts.

I took a picture of this item to send to Dr. Mari because she collects cows. I've stopped buying her cow items (for the most part) because her house is overflowing with cow things and she really doesn't need any more so I just email her the photo to let her know I was thinking of her:

I took this photo because I actually did buy something made by this artist, who also works part time in the store (but I can't tell you what it was 'cuz it's someone's Christmas present and I don't want to give it away). When I give a gift from somewhere special made by a local artisan, I like to put the business card or a paper explaining who made the art and where it came from. But this artist didn't have any such information on paper that I could include, so I took the picture of her display and will create my own paper.

I know these photos aren't too exciting, but I got so caught up in having a blast in Belgrade that I forgot to take any pictures of the cute, quaint town! I'll pretend that I didn't take any because it was rainy/drizzly and the pics wouldn't do the town justice. Or even better, I'll have to go back to Belgrade (and I think I will) in order to take photos on a bright sunny day or on a beautiful snowy wintery day.

Define "Camp"

The word "camp" is used here in Maine in ways I've never heard before. Like the way the British say "hospital" without an article in front of it ("I took her to hospital" instead of "I took her to the hospital" or "a hospital"), so Mainers and Mainiacs use the word camp without an article. It's not uncommon to hear, "Are you going to camp this weekend?" But they don't mean the verb "to camp," and they aren't referring to the noun for an established summer camp like Girl Scout camp. They're referring to summer homes, generally on lakes or near water, often very rustic, where families have gone for generations to wile away lazy summer days. I actually first heard the term in Louisiana, but then there are so many similarities between Cajun things in Louisiana and Franco-American things in Maine that I'm not surprised.

These are sentences I've heard so far using the word "camp":
We went to open camp Saturday. (Everyone in the family--different generations and in-laws--like a family reunion but more like a work party--all went to the family homestead camp and cleaned it up and aired it out and opened it up to get ready for camp season, i.e., summer)
My mother's family has camp on Big Pond. (All the family and extended family on her mother's side of the family goes to the same cottage/cabin/house every summer on Big Pond. In this sentence, it can often mean that there are several different buildings on the same land or on nearby pieces of land where different families that are all related go every summer so that all the cousins can play together.)
What time are you going to camp this afternoon? (A family (mom, dad, 2 sons) that we sat with at the 4th of July parade, was there with extended family (both sets of grandparents AND two sets of great grandparents, a brother and sister-in-law, I think a sister and brother-in-law but I lost track, and lots and lots of little kids). All those generations and barely-related folks were going to a plot of land on a nearby lake that had several structures (cabin/cottage/house) that somehow all belonged to all of these people and they had a big 4th of July picnic planned at that location.)