What a Difference a Bay Makes: Michael and Dan in Maine and Acadia National Park

 

Daniel Emberley, October 2021

 

 

Dan’s nephew was getting married north of Boston, and it was looking Covid-safer for travel.  Especially if we could keep our interactions with others to a minimum, so no crowded spaces or unmasked interiors, and avoiding inside dining.  We figured we’d try a road trip north into the presumably saner and safer Northeast Corridor, topping off at Acadia, a National Park that’s been on our list for a long time.   Our friend Linda wanted to see Philip Johnson’s Glass House in Connecticut with us.  Michael picked up a rental, Dan activated his Holiday Inn account, and we were off.

 

Lots of reuniting with family and friends, and several cool arts, architecture, and nature sites en route.  Nephew properly hitched, with no family drama.   Glad we went while it was still warm enough to eat outside, even in Maine.

 

Saturday, October 2

We picked up Linda and headed up the Garden State Parkway to Montclair, New Jersey.  This is a wealthy and lovely suburb of New York, we could see views of Manhattan between mansions.  The Montclair Art Museum has a good collection of local artists, including George Inness, and a great collection of Native American.  They were highlighting Navajo blankets that were made in the 1870’s, when U.S. tribal agents introduced modern-dyed yarns to the tribe.  The result was almost psychedelic, traditional patterns woven in colors so bright they could have been from a 1960’s poster.  When railroads brought tourists west the Navajo changed to the duller earth tones we expect, so this was a brief, vibrant moment of textiles. 

 

We stopped at the Holiday Inn Express in Ramsey-Mahwah, near the New York State border.   Dinner at a nice pub with a terrace, the Shannon Rose.  We traded food quality on this trip for safety; outside dining was more important than the food.  So, no dining revelations, but this was one of the nicer meals we ate at a commercial establishment.

 

Sunday, October 3

We’d seen Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut, years ago, but had wanted to get back.  From Mahwah it is an easy hour over the Mario Cuomo/Tappanzee Bridge and up the Merritt Parkway.  This was Johnson’s place to experiment with architectural styles, a complex of International Style, Earth Art, Post-Modern, and classical pavilions.  Linda was surprised by the variety, and excited to get inside a building she’d only seen in photos.  We were given carte blanche to wander; the National Trust has traded formal guided tours for open roaming, with guides and guards available where needed.  We were definitely seeing the wear the property is going through, it will be hard for the Trust to maintain these experimental buildings properly. 

 

New Canaan had a community of Modern architects who left nuggets of style across town.  We got a picnic at the Walter Stewart Supermarket next to the Glass House Visitor Center; its 1957 Victor Christ-Janer design reminded us of the Kreeger Museum in D.C. 

 

Northeast on town streets to the Glebe House Museum and Gertrude Jekyll Gardens in Woodbury.  This is not a necessary stop.  The house proper is a colonial wood-frame home where the Episcopal Church of America formally organized itself outside the Church of England during our Revolution.  That’s why it was saved, but I only learned that later from a handout.  All original furnishings were lost, and over-enthusiastic volunteers are determined to show you every donated rope bed and candle mold with tired anecdotes.  They have a couple of nice high-top dressers.  Back in the 1920’s, when the Colonial Dames were restoring the house, they commissioned English landscape architect Gertrude Jekyll to design the gardens.  Then never built it.  In the 1970’s a grad student discovered the plans, and the garden was executed in the 1990’s.  It’s okay, not sensational.  Maybe we just saw it at a bad season, October is rarely peak viewing.

 

Town roads back to New Haven and Long Island Sound.  Our mutual friends Bev and Wanda hosted us overnight at their home in Branford.  They had a full house; D.C. friends Cindy and Andy were there as well, staying in a cool pop-up tent mounted to their car.  Drinks by the shore, a walk along the cove, then a fantastic vegetarian dinner coordinated by Andy and brilliant conversation into the evening.  Delightful.

 

Monday, October 4

I helped Wanda prepare apple pancakes for the crowd, and we said goodbye to Linda, who was taking Amtrak back to D.C.  North to the Mass Pike and west to Lenox, Massachusetts. 

 

We stopped downtown at Starving Artists Café, then out to The Mount.  This is the home Edith Wharton designed with Ogden Codman; together they had written “The Decoration of Homes”, and this mansion was a chance to execute their ideas.  The only original furnishings are the books in the library, but it has been restored and furnished in period pieces.  They nicely gloss over the lack of Wharton’s interiors with displays on her many guests, life with her mentally unstable and alcoholic husband, and her writing.  Lots of grounds, but the gardens are small, a single lime allee with a French courtyard at one end and an Italian at the other.  Less than one expects from Beatrix Jones Farrand’s aunt, but a pleasant walk in the drizzle, the only rainy day of our trip.  They serve coffee on the terrace, but we drove over to Pittsfield to share cookies with our friend Patty White, who we were pleased to see after several years’ absence.

 

Three hours northeast, nicking a corner of Vermont, brought us to my brother John’s house north of Concord, New Hampshire.  His wife Miho had prepared a Japanese feast, and we got to meet new puppy Jack.  Driving winding Franklin Pierce Highway in the dark and rain was no fun, but we were glad to overnight with John and Miho.

 

Tuesday, October 5

South on I-93 and north on I-95 brings one to Portland, Maine.  We started seeing the first leaf color of our trip.  Autumn was late this year, and the usual foliage less than spectacular, but pretty where we found it.  Our friends Viveca and Eddie live in Cape Elizabeth; they and their daughter Midori made us a fantastic near-vegetarian lunch.  Parsnip, their bichon-poodle puppy, provided entertainment.  Then up the coast through Wiscasset to Boothbay Harbor.  B&M Baked Beans factory off the freeway.

 

The Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay Harbor are stunning.  I had not been sure these would be worth a stop; they were only established in 2007.  But they had appeared on a recent set of postage stamps, so we’d made a reservation.  We were glad we did.  Very themed (a garden of the senses, children’s garden, butterfly house), but brilliantly planted so that even in October there was lots of color.  Good use of fountains, granite, and waterfalls.  The dahlias were especially beautiful, and we expect the rhododendron trails are spectacular in early summer.  An artist had created giant troll sculptures along the birch allee, which drew us to the far end of the property where we caught a shuttle back.  Good shops. 

 

North passing Augusta took us to the Holiday Inn Express Waterville, conveniently on I-95.

 

Wednesday, October 6

East and south to Bar Harbor, and Acadia National Park.  Have you ever felt betrayed by a place?  Bar Harbor and the Park were like that.  We had only heard good things about both, but our first experience was that they are too congested, and predatory.  We normally tour National Parks in their slow seasons, where we can drive in, do the main auto route, check out some less visited parts, then relax in a lodge after a bland but decent dinner.  Not here.  There is too little infrastructure for the numbers of visitors they draw.  Tourists had the rabid feel of crowds who know there are only twenty seats for thirty diners.  Townspeople had an air of getting as much out of the summer people as they could harvest.  We were able to park relatively easily just outside of town, but it went downhill rapidly after that.  The shopping is okay, less tourist-trap than Key West, but on its way.  Sidewalks were jammed.  We could not get served in a restaurant: we figured we’d get an early seating and get out, but at 11:30 places were only serving locals, and tourists had started lining up to be seated.  Honestly?  We checked out the Tiffany windows in St. Saviour’s Episcopal Church, and drove off-island to a crowded-but-do-able Trenton Bridge Lobster Pound on the mainland.  Where we paid $90 for a couple lobster rolls, bowl of chowder, and slice of blueberry pie.  All good, but at that price? 

 

Maybe the Park would be better.  Acadia was assembled out of the summer resorts of American millionaires, so it’s still a little patchy, with private lands dotted throughout.  It fills about half of Mt. Desert Island.  Acadia is famous for its granite outcrops above wave-swept promontories lined with pine forests.  It must have been an amazing vacation when it was just the millionaires and the locals who served them.  Now it is a chain of cars jostling for parking at each pullout off the Loop Road.  We started at the main Hull Cove Visitors Center, where there were lines to get into the shop, and the bathrooms, and to get a Park permit from a harried Ranger who was trying unsuccessfully to handle the crowd.  Fortunately, I had already printed our permit, so we turned around and joined the queue of cars on the Loop Road.  Acadia runs buses that cover this same turf, but the routes are many and confusing, and have to deal with the same traffic on the same roads.  We were able to stop at the Wild Gardens of Acadia (eh, looked like our backyard growing up in New Hampshire), Thunder Hole, Otter Cove, and Little Hunters Point.  At Jordan Pond House there were at least three lines to make reservations for different things; we gave up and walked around the pond and forest a bit. 

 

Exiting the Park we headed north to the Holiday Inn Bar Harbor Regency.  Despite our love for the IHG chain, we try to avoid the Holiday Inn line itself; these tend to be 1980’s or earlier ideas of a luxury hotel.  Except it’s a Holiday Inn.  This disappointed similarly, it was probably built as a resort in the 1960’s.  It is directly downhill from the Visitors Center, but so steep that you cannot walk into the Park from here.  And just far enough out of town that you’re not going to walk into Bar Harbor.  We checked in, ordered dinner to go from the restaurant, and waited an hour for it to be prepared.  They were woefully understaffed, the bartender and hostess both checked in on us regularly, and were apologetic, but it was not a good use of a dinner hour.  Again, not enough staff/infrastructure for the crowd they attempted to serve.

 

Clearly, that did not work.  We vowed to experience Acadia differently the next day.

 

Thursday, October 7

Cadillac Mountain is the highest point on the American coast north of Brazil.  It is a classic drive in the Park.  So classic that in addition to reserving to get into the Park, you have to make a separate reservation for access to the summit.  Most people want to be there for either sunrise or sunset, but I thought driving a mountain road in traffic in the dark would be insane, so we had a summit reservation for 9:00.  And magically, the reservations did just what they were supposed to: limited the number of visitors so there was no crush, enough spaces in the parking lot, and a totally enjoyable time.  Such a difference.  The views over the Park, Maine, and the ocean are awesome.  The stones of Acadia, a series of geological epochs smushed together and glacier-worn so that billion-year-old granite and million-year-old sedimentary rock are adjacent or even in alternating layers, in a way we had not seen since the Grand Canyon.  We hiked the Summit Trail, and were psyched we had made this commitment.

 

We zipped south and west on the Loop Road, exiting to Seal Harbor.  This is a town that still caters to people who own estates on the island.  It was where the original Rockefeller estate was, and Martha Stewart’s place, formerly belonging to the Ford auto family, is just down the road.  Little Long Pond Reserve was gifted by David Rockefeller to a private foundation in 2015 to allow public access.  It is very simple, a pond, lawns, hiking trails, and hills that must once have been family estate reserved out of their donations to the Park.  Quiet and lovely, we had it almost to ourselves. 

 

Asticou Azalea Gardens, just around the peninsula in Northeast Harbor, is not on the Park Service map of Acadia at all. It was created by Charles Savage in 1958 to emphasize connections between Acadia and Japan.  Savage’s friend, Beatrix Jones Farrand, gave up her gardens at Reef Point nearby as she neared the end of her life, and many of her plants were relocated here.  It is the most Japanese-seeming garden we’ve seen since we were in that country: lots of pine trees, winding walks, natural materials.  Stepping stones over a creek, and massive boulder bridges.  There is a raked sand garden, but that is the least important part of the aesthetic.  The azaleas must be stunning, but we were not there at the correct time to see them. 

 

We stopped for lunch at a sandwich shop in Northeast Harbor; the town is lovely.  Got delicious lobster and roast beef & cheese sandwiches with chowder and sat outside at picnic tables.  The best chocolate-glazed donut I ever ate.  Just as we arrived a rude biker group showed up.  Not, like, on Harleys, but in Peloton gear on 10-speeds.  Mean to each other, mean to the store staff.  Honestly, why? 

 

A short hike from Asticou is Thuya Garden.  This was supposed to be closed for the season, but the kind guard at Asticou checked with the group ahead of us and it was open.  Maybe because the weather was so nice?  Same preservation group, no mention of this on any Park literature.  Thuya Lodge had been a small hotel, and in a similar collaboration between Charles Savage, John D. Rockefeller Jr., and the plants of Beatrix Jones Farrand, the garden was created in a series of woodland rooms adjacent to a more formal mall space.  Small and delightful.  Lots of monarch butterflies.  There is a formal hike down the hill to the old hotel’s harbor dock, but it was so steep that we decided I could not hike it back up if we went down.  If you want a lovely day’s hike, you could combine Asticou, Thuya, and Long Pond, but be sure to bring your own provisions.

 

Most of Acadia is on Mount Desert Isle.  But not all.  There are chunks on other islands, and a big piece due east on the Schoodic Peninsula.  It would probably have been a twenty-minute sail across Frenchman Bay, but by car it is an hour drive north, east, and south to the Schoodic.  Totally worth it.  Similar landscape to Mount Desert, but a very different history with almost no visitors.  There’s a drive along the edge of the peninsula, with so little traffic we were able to slow and enjoy vistas from the car.   Not as many pullouts, but big parking lots at Frazier and Schoodic Points with access to trails and views back to Mount Desert.  The tip of the peninsula has a massive stone beach with tidal pools, layers of red and black rock, and just enough challenge jumping from one stone to another to make you feel like an explorer. 

 

We stopped at an IGA in Winter Harbor to pick up groceries for dinner and breakfast, which we took back to the hotel.  One advantage of the Holiday Inn was a large pool deck, where we were able to spread out a picnic and dine while we watched the sun set over the bay looking back to the Schoodic.  Our second day totally redeemed Acadia.  One should definitely go.  Just avoid any place the Park Service is attracting crowds to – smile.

 

Friday, October 8

Driving south on Route 1 gave us a brilliant view of towns along the Maine coast.  We stopped in art center Rockland.  Their Farnsworth Art Museum was founded by my old employer, The Boston Company, who had had a show of the collection at our offices back in the 1980’s.  I’ve wanted to get here ever since.  It turns out to be one of the better collections of American art, with lots of Wyeths and artists who summered in Maine even if their studios were elsewhere.  We really liked their Marguerite Zorach, also shows of Jasper Johns on Marsden Hartley and of women bookbinders.  The building has been added onto several times, most recently in 2014, which makes it a bit of a muddle, but one that gives you a discovery at every turn. 

 

Lunch was around the corner at Café Miranda, who had set up a streetery in the sun: fish cake dinner, roast pepper flatbread, Caesar salad.  The shopping along Main Street was cool and fun, we stopped at the Audubon Society’s Puffin Project Visitor Center to learn about puffin reintroduction in Maine. 

 

The Center for Maine Contemporary Art occupies a fabulous Toshiko Mori building near the Farnsworth.  They had good shows of local and national artists working today.  We loved the way they used wire boxes that looked like lobster traps as seating.

 

We scooted south on Routes 1, 295, and 95 through New Hampshire to the Candlewood Suites in Danvers, Massachusetts.

 

Saturday, October 9

We had never explored Essex County outside of Salem and the coast.  This is where H.P. Lovecraft set many of his stories.  Lots of towns with rich colonial history, some of which retained the architecture.  Along the Merrimac River, Newburyport has some of the best; we walked along their rail trail, contemporary tourist downtown, and pre-Revolutionary War mansions on High Street.  Lunch with Mom and my brother John’s family at the 99, a local steakhouse chain, in Amesbury.  Then Michael and I headed into Ipswich, for more High Street colonial mansions.  Nephew Joe and Courtney successfully married in Rowley, then we were back to Danvers to chill. 

 

Sunday, October 10

We met friends Alice and KathyAnn for an early lunch at MarketStreet in Lynnfield.  This was a new complex to me, it opened in 2017.  It reminded us of Sugar Land Town Center outside Houston.  For Washingtonians, think the shopping complex at Largo, but with the high-end national chains you find in Bethesda or Arlington.   Seemed bizarre for New England, but also successful.  For local color they adopted three of the fiberglass cows that lived at the Hilltop on Route 1, which is fun.  Then a quick run to Demoula’s Market Basket for groceries one cannot find in D.C. (Italian sausage, Drake’s Ring Dings and Funny Bones, Cain’s Mayonnaise, Bells Seasoning).  My brother Dave and his wife Priscilla, parents of yesterday’s groom, hosted dinner for us to connect after the wedding at their home in Shrewsbury.  A nice reunion, then we dropped Mom off in Waltham and checked into the Holiday Inn Express up on Winter Street.

 

Monday, October 11

Woke up to discover we were in a hotel full of folks running the Boston Marathon.  Guess Boston postponed from April to October due to Covid.  We headed west to Garrison, a rich suburb of New York City.  Cool train station, with great views of West Point across the Hudson. 

 

We had reservations for a tour of Manitoga, the Russel Wright Design Center.  Wright is one of the great designers of Mid-Century Modern.  He and wife Mary wrote the book on entertaining in an American, rather than aspiring-to-European-wealth, way; 1950’s “Guide to Easier Living”.  If you have your friends over for a backyard bbq, or beers with a football game, or think potato chips are an appetizer, you can thank the Wrights.  With the profits from their American Modern dinnerware they purchased this site, a former quarry, and spent a decade landscaping it into the meadow, creek, lake, and trails they wanted for their country house.  Mary died during the landscaping, but Russel went on to create a home complex for him and their daughter.  Two buildings perch on the edge of a lake that fills the former quarry (he re-routed the creek to do that), one for him and his studio, the other for guests, the daughter, and entertainment spaces.  Board-and-batten done as we’ve never seen, with massive timber boards over thin battens.  Brilliant experiments we take for granted today, like living within nature, green roofs, using materials in innovative ways (paper towel cores, butterflies, and seeds captured in acrylic wall dividers, pine needles and birch bark texturing doors and ceilings, burlap diffusing light from florescent bulbs).  All with an aesthetic that Wright learned on cultural exchanges with Japan.  It’s set into woods of firs, pines, and mountain laurels; autumn reds against the evergreens were fantastic.  Open plan interiors anchored by massive stone ledges, rooms set into the hillside so that window ledges are at ground level where you can watch squirrels over dinner.   A little hard to get to, and totally worth it.

 

Garrison is far enough north that we were able to take the Fish Bridge west, then down I-87 to Allentown, Pennsylvania.  We checked into the Holiday Inn Express, and picked up dinner at the modestly named “Dominican Restaurant”.  Carb-heavy, but delicious, rice plates with beef, roast pork, and eggplant.

 

Tuesday, October 12

Bethlehem, adjacent to Allentown, is a place I’ve considered for a Christmas drive.  Their municipal center by the Lehigh River is like every error of 1970’s town planning, but oddly well executed.  It is adjacent to their colonial Moravian town center, 4-5 blocks of historic Bohemian stone buildings restored into a museum complex.  Which is only open on weekends, but still fun to walk around.  Then we drove across the river to SteelStacks, the biggest abandoned industrial site we’ve seen east of Detroit.  Massive furnaces, stacks, and conveyors surrounded by parking lots that must have once been ore, freight, and rail yards, when Bethlehem Steel was the most important foundry in the world.  The city is trying to leverage the site into a cultural center, with artist studios, performing spaces, and a museum of industry, but it is such a massive site it’s hard to image this succeeding without an equivalent income stream to bolster their economy.  Renting homes to Lehigh University students is not going to cut it.

 

West to Harrisburg, south to Baltimore, and home to D.C.  Great to be able to do a road trip again.

 

On our roster for future I-95 trips: