Cape Elizabeth, Maine, and Used Book Stores

We've just had our first two-week vacation since 1988 and we loved it.  But being in the same cottage we rented in Cape Elizabeth last year, feeling that we were coming back to a place we love, made it harder to leave.  The cottage is on a point jutting into the ocean, on a dead end road with only dead end roads around it.  We never heard a car horn, a motorcycle, shouting, beer bottles breaking, car alarms, or anything to disrupt the sound of waves on the rocky shore.  Perfect.

A view of the cove and open ocean from the bedroom.

A view from the living room.  The ocean is visible at the end of the lane as that bright patch of blue.

A view of Two Lights lighthouse from the lane in front of the cottage.

The cove and a house I'd love to have (except that it's too big).

We saw a lot of wildlife on this visit.  One evening a doe and two fawns ran past the window and settled in to eat in the back yard.  Jack took this photo through the window (through the screen, unfortunately).  Another evening, two grey foxes chased each other through the yard and made their weird cries.  You can hear them here.  Creepy!

The following two photos are of Portland Head Light, a lighthouse painted by Edward Hopper and other artists. 

Prout's Neck is only a few minutes drive from the cottage.  We drove out there, but most of the roads are dead ends and private ways.  One of my favorite artists, Winslow Homer, had a house out there.  You can tour it, but you have to go in to Portland, get tickets at the art museum, and have them shuttle you back and forth for a tour of the house.  It's also not inexpensive.  We passed on it this year, maybe next year.

We spent most of our time reading (surprise, surprise, and even Jack read a book), walking, and sitting on a log at the cove.  We met a resident who introduced us to another resident, both very nice.  I'd love to buy a house there, but, apparently, once you're there, you don't leave.  There's nothing for sale along any of the roads on the point.  I'll be happy, I guess, as long as Holly keeps renting us her cottage.

I got a 'Maine Guide to Finding Old Books' pamphlet and visited five or six used bookstores.  Several were too stuffy but I loved three of them.  I'm not collecting books any more, so I prefer less expensive books I can read and pass on.  Two Brothers Books in Freeport was great, as was the proprietor and his two very fat cats.  Equally wonderful was Mainely Murder Bookstore in Kennebunk.  The two retired ladies who own the store were helpful and a hoot.  They're happy to run next door or into their house to look for books for you.  There was also a library bookstore that had two Elizabeth Daly mysteries.  I think it was in Brunswick.  It's not in the pamphlet;  I think I found it on-line.

It was a great trip, if a long drive (7 hours from Philadelphia if there's no traffic or accidents, which is impossible these days).  We thought that by staying two weeks, we'd get our fill of Cape Elizabeth, but it only made us want it more.  Cape Elizabeth vs. Philadelphia:  heaven and hell.

The moon was full while we were there.  Jack took these two final photos of the moon over the cove.

Camden, Maine

We've just returned from a week in a lovely cottage overlooking the harbor in Camden, Maine.  If you're paying attention, you know that Jack and I lived in New England for most of our lives until making the horrendous mistake of moving to Philadelphia almost ten years ago.  For us, a week in New England is a week in heaven.  Take a look at the view from the cottage window:

Really, could you ever get tired of this?  There is always something to look at:  people, boats, birds, clouds.

The town of Camden is a charming old town, founded in 1791, although it was settled earlier than that.  It's on the Atlantic but is a protected harbor.  While we were there, Jack went for a sail on a schooner, Olad.  It wasn't the same as captaining his own boat, the late, great Jouster, but it got him out on the ocean and he came back happier than I've seen him in a long time.  Maybe he does need to get another boat.

In long relationships, you learn to give and take.  I tried to like sailing, but I just do not.  I put in my years and then put down my foot.  Jack doesn't read, Joan doesn't sail.  So while he was sailing, I was enjoying the sights of Camden.

The Megunticook River runs through Camden, under some shops, and down the falls on the left, into the harbor.  The town curves down to the waterfront and up into the Camden Hills.

There are three used book stores in town and one new book store.  Owl and Turtle has mostly new books and their used books were all fairly current used books.  Goose River Books was antiquarian books.  They had a nice selection, but these days I look for moderately priced used books, not collectibles.  My favorite used book store in Camden is Stone Soup, up a steep stairway into a few very crowded rooms of mostly paperbacks.  I'd been there years and years ago when we lived in New England and spent a night in Camden.  

One day during our latest visit, I drove up the coast to Searsport.  I'd planned to visit Penobscot Books and another book barn I noticed a few days earlier.  Penobscot Books wasn't open, but the creatively named 'Used Books' was  -  and it was what I consider to be an almost perfect used book store.  In a freezing cold barn, there were paperbacks for a dollar each, Penguins in plastic protectors for $3.00 each, mid-priced old books (lots of children's serials like Tom Swift, Judy Bolton, Cherry Ames), and some pricier ones.  I bought an armful of paperback mysteries.

On my drive, I had noticed a slightly dilapidated small white house overlooking a sweep of meadow down to the ocean.  I thought it had a 'For Sale' sign out.  So Jack and I drove back a few days later to check it out.  Unfortunately, it was the land next to the house that was for sale.  But what a view.  Here's pretty much what it looked like, and a few photos of the coast north of Camden:

We had taken some sandwiches with us to eat on the beach, but the wind was blowing off the water and we got back in the car to avoid frost bite.  We laughed though when two women with small girls arrived independently at the beach with pails and shovels.  Who gets up on a cloudy cold day and says to their little girl 'Grab your pail and shovel!  We're going to the beach!'?  I guess that would be a hardy New Englander!