Boothbay Harbor

Geo: 43.8514, -69.6283

Weather: 77 and sunny and perfect

We couldn't ask for a more picturesque place and better weather. Our cottage is rustic and charming. The views are priceless. The town of Boothbay is beautiful, artsy, harborish and perfect. We are having a...well the only way to describe it is, a lovely time. We have spent two nights here. Today we explored the property here and moseyed on into town.

The kids and I woke up around 7. I made my coffee and made them some hot chocolate and we sat on the deck and tried to take mental photographs of the scene before us. Peace and picturesque...until MATTHEW decides to speak loud enough for the lobster fisherman to hear him in the bay. How many times we have to tell him not to share our conversations with the world...the universe. We wandered down to the dock to take a closer look at the water and the boats. The kids met an 11 year old girl named Katie in the next cottage who lives in Brooklyn and comes here every year. She took the kids to the cove where kids can swim. Later the kids took us to see it. They were baffled because where there was sand was now water. Matthew says, "That's weird. This doesn't look the same. There was sand." I realized he meant that the tide had come in. They didn't know what a tide was. So I tried to explain while their interest drifted off to soaking their clothes while I tried not to fall in or break my ankle on the giant rocks.

Late morning, we went into Boothbay Harbor to see about some kind of boat trip around the Harbor. We had a lobster, crabcake and shrimp lunch on the water before our boat trip. We wandered through shops and tried some chocolate bacon popcorn but Ben and I decided it just tasted like burnt chocolate popcorn. We always have high hopes for bacon anything. Bacon! The boat ride was peaceful (aside from Matthew talking through the whole thing). We went out to Mouse Island and Squirrel Island and a couple of others. We got a little history about Maine and it's harbor.

Back at the cottage, the kids were excited to get back to the cove and get wet. So we went over with Katie. What to my wondering city eyes, there was no water. Well there was water but there was a beach. The tide had gone out leaving sand, rocks, shells, crabs, hermit crabs and other sea life. Awesome. A teacher's delight. We caught crabs and beachcombed for a while. Literally, where there was a tiny peak of rock in the water in the morning was an island now. The kids could walk across the cove. Blew my mind. We don't get to experience that in Michigan like that often. Paul brought a glass of wine down and we wandered with the kids. Perfection.

We went back to our deck and had some cheese, salami and fruit snacks on the deck with the kids and enjoy watching the bay change with the sinking sun. We went into town to an Italian Restaurant for dinner. We felt like we were on Restaurant Impossible. No one was in there and that made us nervous. The lady asked if we wanted cracked pepper but it would work so she went to get another and Elizabeth whispered, "maybe it doesn't work because no one has eaten here in so long." This followed some of daddy's bad jokes about the restaurant. We sat by the water and watched the tide come back in. Beached boats and docks were floating again by the time we left. The food was good (nothing special). It was called Amore. Paul thought it should be called Alesse. It was fine. Too funny as we were leaving there was a statue resembling Matthew. Today on the deck, I turned around to find Matthew peeing off into the woods with a cottage above full of people on the deck. WTH! You men! He did know that wasn't ok since I told him to pee in the cove earlier, WHERE NOONE WAS AROUND! Jeez. When I saw him and heard all the people just above us, I hollered so abruptly that he nearly snapped his shorts shut midstream. Uh.

After dinner, we took a walk through a neighborhood to make a loop across a footbridge that crosses the bay and headed back through town back to our car. Nice evening.

Tomorrow we pack up and hit the road again through New Hampshire toward Boston. Not sure where we are staying yet. We'll let you know tomorrow. Happy trails.Read more