Making Our Way Downeast

We still had a few things to do before we left Scarborough, and yes, some involved food:-)  When we lived in NH from 1978-1998, for about 5 years or so, we would rent a beach house on Wells Beach, and most of the time we did we would be joined by family and friends.  We all would share this old decrepit one bathroom house right smack on the beach for two weeks having a ball.  There is a restaurant there called Billy's Chowder House that we would go to often, and sometimes we would even drive over in the middle of winter to have some of their terrific food.  It sits out on a tidal marsh on the land bridge from the mainland to the beach.  After we left NH, on one of our visits back we went again and found it had gone downhill.  We didn't go there again during our couple more visits to the area, but we had heard it had returned to its original glory and we were looking forward to finding out first hand.  So off we launched, and found out they were having $1 oyster day to boot!  So we put in our orders, Tom a dozen, Jan 4, and a dozen for me along with the rest of our orders.  We were hoping for okay oysters, especially for a buck a piece.

THEY WERE AWESOME!

And so was the rest of our meal.

Tom had clam chowder which I was remiss in getting picture of, but reported delicious.

Karen's seafood chowder and haddock bites

Jan's terrific haddock chowder

And my awesome lobster stew, stew that is,
no potatoes, the way it is supposed to be, thin, milky,
buttery scrumptiousness overflowing with lobster

After a delightful meal, Tom and looked at each other and when the waitress asked if we would like dessert, we each ordered another dozen oysters:-)  Wonderful!

So we once again heartily recommend Billy's.  Then we decided to go walk on the beach.  At low tide Wells beach is great, nice and wide with hard pack sand and the ability to walk for miles.  We had timed our visit for low tide, but had not planned for the intense wind so we only walked a mile or so, but we had to go see our old rental house.

Blustery

But beautiful

And our poor old house, but it looks like someone was in the process of redoing it, what a location.

On another day Jan and I wanted to go back to Portsmouth, NH for a few things, to visit an asian market and a farmer's market, and decided to get some more Newick's clam chowder while there, and to our surprise, we found out Karen and Tom on their travels went back to Billy's for another lunch:-)

And this is what clam chowder looks like

Man, do we miss this kind of food, so we are really taking advantage of it in restaurants and markets.  We are happy, happy.

Jan and I even went back and walked Wells Beach again.

But now with Memorial Day weekend arriving it was time for us to go downeast.  So off to Boothbay, and across the bridge in Bath with the shipyard fairly quiet.

We pulled into our campground, Shore Hills, a nice place, and were surprised and still are surprised that they are not full.  We are wondering if the high fuel prices are taking their toll?  Normally here in New England the start of the season, Memorial Day and the finish, Labor Day are usually standing room only.

Us in front, Karen and Tom behind

The campground borders a tidal flat if you are willing to walk down a big hill to get there, and a mountain to get back:-)

All of us are having fun, including Karen and Tom's dog, Sophia.

The first day of the weekend was gloomy, rainy, cool, and foggy, but still beautiful.

One of our goals, a must do in fact, is to go to famous Red's Eats in Wiscasset, just down the road, for one of their gigantic lobster rolls, but we wanted to wait until after the weekend to do it with the big lines.  There will be more on that later, but in the meantime there is another lobster shack across the street that gets almost as glowing reviews and has much shorter lines, we had never visited Sprague's lobster before and we all decided it would be a good idea to check it out.  We did and we all were quite impressed.  Nice friendly place, and the lobster rolls were great!

A very respectable and delicious lobster roll!

More to come.

Busy, Busy, Mostly Eating:-)

Once we got Gilbert's and Newicks out of the way, we moved on to other favorite places to eat, and after all we hadn't even had a lobster roll yet!  First stop was Harraseeket Lunch, we wanted to get there before Memorial Day and the crowds arrive.  This has been one of our favorites for many years.  We got steamers, awesome seafood chowder and excellent haddock sandwiches.

Then not to be outdone, Jan made a great shrimp dish for dinner.

So by now the thoughts of lobster rolls were really penetrating our minds so we decided the first one would be a famous one in Kennebunkport at the Clam Shack that many folks feel is the best lobster roll in Maine.  And it truly is a shack, a building about 10 X 10 that offers a unique, at least for Maine, roll in that it is not on a New England hot dog bun, but instead on a perfect soft round roll. We scoffed years ago that on this roll it could be as wonderful, but after trying it, we had to admit it was superb.  In our opinion it is number 2, behind Red's which we will have next week.  It is a perfect lobster roll in that it is just fresh lobster and if you order "both", highly recommended, you get a dab of mayo on the bun and a bit of melted butter over the meat.  It is truly wonderful, so wonderful in fact, we all decided to go back two days later and get another:-)  And the spot where we ate them is nice as well.

We have been having a cool and wet spring here in Maine.  It doesn't get over maybe 65 and many days a lot cooler, there has been quite a lot of rain, drizzle, and fog, but actually it is quite welcome.  We have been walking every day, getting together enjoying each others company, and eating, eating, eating.  And had a wonderful visit with Bob and Harlean, friends that live in Maine we met in Florida.  We'll see you again later.

And of course solving the world's problems at happy hour:-) 

Jan made a delicious Spicy Thai Beef salad one night, a hit.

The happy chef

In fact when we went back down to get our second dose of lobster, it was quite foggy.

We found an incredible seafood market nearby with a beautiful selection of fresh fish, and have been enjoying wonderful meals at home as well as out.  Swordfish, one evening, and some fresh scallops with a couple of soft shell crabs another!

We haven't bought any live lobsters yet, that will come later.  The prices are up this year with the  combination of expensive fuel and rule changes that really hit the fishermen hard.

We had booked a fishing trip this year and hoped the weather would cooperate.  It sort of did, a bright blue clear day when we arrived at the dock, but the wind was strong and gusty and actually got worse as the day progressed, but we still had fun.

With the intense wind, which you can't really see in the pictures, we didn't go far out.  Turned out we were fishing for Striped Bass, or Stripers, something we had never done before.  Captain Ben tried to anchor several times, but with the strong wind and poor holding ground had to grab a mooring to get in the fishing.  He said most of the time he drifts slowly along, but if he did that we'd be back at the dock in about a minute:-)

Karen was first to get one on the line, a nice fish, and quite large, but not big enough to keep, they have to be between 28" and 35", and since it is early in their runs, most are smaller.

Tom was next, he got into a smaller one.

Captain Ben netting Tom's fish

Then finally I got one.  Pretty exciting, as the fish ran with the drag squealing.

Unfortunately Jan got skunked, and then just before we had to go back in, Karen got another!

Even with the wind, it was a fun and beautiful day.

Maine!

We made it.  We stopped in Greenland, NH to fill up our diesel tank first and set a new record for us.

We actually paid just a little less than it shows, but wow!

Then up over the Piscataqua River into Maine.

I don't know how many of you know that Jan and I lived about 25 miles from here in NH for over 20 years, so it does feel a bit like going home again.  We pulled into our huge site at Bayley's Camping Resort in Scarborough, ME.  A very nice, absolutely huge place, hundreds and hundreds of sites, 3 pools, restaurants, on and on, a fabulously buzzing place especially on the weekend.

And we were greeted by some of the regulars:-)

Karen, Jan's sister and Tom pulled in about an hour later just in time for happy hour, excellent timing, so we had some time to catch up, especially since we hadn't seen Karen in a year.  Then we planned out some of our assault on the seafood.  It is cool here, mid 50's-60's, and has been even cooler, with some off and on rain and fog, and the last two days blowing a gale, so suffice to say springtime in New England:-)

So we dodged some raindrops and went the next day into Portland to Gilbert's for our first meal.

Clockwise, clam chowder in a bread bowl, fries, seafood chowder, another
seafood chowder, onion rings, and lobster stew.

Jan and I went over to the beach after, but it turned out our timing was bad.  It was high tide and no room to walk the beach, going to have to watch the tides closer.

Still a little foggy and rainy

Then Tom and Karen with a little help from me spent the next day finding an elusive water leak in their coach that was taken care of successfully, but with a bit of frustration:-)

We have reserved an offshore fishing trip while we are here, and Tom and I needed to get some boots, so we went south to the Kittery Trading Post  and found just what we needed along with several other items that we all needed as well.  And, of course, since we were down there we went for lunch at Newicks.

Awesome onion nuggets

Clam chowder the way it's supposed to be,
thin broth and full of clams

Fried whole belly clams

Haddock sandwich

Haddock bites

It was all delish.  So today we learned friends, Bob and Harlean are coming here on Saturday, so we'll be able to visit a bit before seeing them again later in the month.  And today we are going to LL Bean's and to lunch at Haraseeket Lunch, an institution, in South Freeport, in the same harbor where we kept our sailboat for awhile.  

So I'll warn you now, there are going to a lot of food pictures in the future as we have a ton of places to hit as we move around Maine.