I'm Moving to Owl's Head. Don't Try to Stop Me.

God, I love Maine. I mean, I really love Maine. And this past week only enhanced my love for the state. The Boy From Work was here for a spring vacation, and we used our day to go up and down the coast, seeing and eating the best things along the way. We ate lobster in Cape Elizabeth and fried clams in Freeport. We ate chowder in Rockland and Boothbay Harbor. We saw three lighthouses and explored some of the sweetest, quaintest towns in the whole state.

But none were as sweet and as quaint as Owl's Head. It's a tiny town near Rockland, and one I probably would've never realized I needed to go to if it wasn't for the Food Network's 50 States, 50 Burgers project that named the best burger in each state. Maine's burger--the 7 Napkin Burger--sounded fabulous. Juicy. Drippy. Cheesy. Everything good in the world. And the fact that you could get those burgers to go and take them down the road to tiny Owl's Head Lighthouse for a picnic sounded even better.

And the BFW, who is always ready to go on a trip just to eat something delicious, was up for it. So we headed off for a day trip to Owl's Head and Rockland. We were going to eat lunch in Owl's Head, tour the lighthouse, then head back to Rockland for a trip out to the breakwater lighthouse and shopping in the sweet galleries and stores that line Main Street.

The 7 Napkin Burger is the brainchild of the owners of the Owl's Head General store--a place where you can get homemade burgers and chowders, cookies and whoopie pies. In the warm summer months, there are ice cream novelties to be scooped up. And if you just ran out of ketchup or toilet paper and don't want to travel back to Rockland to grocery shop, you can pop into the General Store for the necessities, which are arranged in the back of the shop, right behind the small eating area.

And that eating area was the cutest thing I'd ever seen. Big and small tables were covered with patterned vinyl table cloths and stocked with plenty of napkins--which you definitely need when eating the burgers. There were a few friends gathered at two of the tables next to ours, and it was clear that this was routine. This was what they did. They came to the store every day for coffee and a snack or a full lunch. When someone came through the door, they were greeted by name. The girls behind the grill--two nineteen year-olds in gym shorts--knew what to serve up for them. They settled in at their table to talk about the weather, to local school, their neighbors. It was so friendly and charming it made me want to lock my legs around my chair and stay there forever, even through the coldest months, when the town's residents would no doubt come through the door stomping off boots and rubbing feeling back into their hands before settling into their chairs for hot chocolate and a slice of crumb cake. I wanted to be one of those regulars worse than anything. Especially after the girls delivered our burgers, which oozed with ketchup and mustard and pickles and cheese. If someone had come into the store at that moment and announced they had a charming apartment for rent--one with a seaside view--I would've been on the phone with the movers, telling them to go on over to my apartment and pack everything up and move it on up the coast.

Of course, Owl's Head wasn't the only amazing place we visited while the BFW was in state. Here are some of the highlights:

This picture was taken at Owl's Head light, which is right up the stairs behind us. As you can see, it was a windy, windy day. When you are planning on going anywhere near the ocean, you have to dress expecting it to be substantially colder than it is inland, especially in the spring. The wind comes in off the Atlantic and rips right through you. We chose a ridiculous day to tour lighthouses--especially one that is a mile into the ocean. Yeah, that's right. We traipsed along the Rockland Breakwater Light in those winds and almost had our ears torn off.

When preparing for a visit to Maine, it's best to fast for a week before your arrival. After all, you're going to eat a lot of seafood. A lot. Here's Ross with one of the chowders we ate over the week. It was good, but it wasn't nearly as good as the best chowder I ever had, which was served up at a tiny cafe in Damariscotta.

This shot was taken at Southport, which is a small island in the waters outside Boothbay Harbor. There is a tiny beach on the island, and we took off our shoes and walked across it, pausing to examine the millions of shells that were scattered across it. The BFW was very impressed with the purple mussel shells. (I'm pretty impressed with them, too. The insides are pearlescent and beautiful. I've got a bunch of them on my desk at school.) In fact, the BFW was so impressed that he took a closed one away from the beach with us. He wanted to see what it would look like it it opened. We both got a littl squirmy about that, though, when the mussel, which cracked open a bit while we were strolling through Boothbay, sucked back shut when the BFW tried to open it further to investigate. We left that thing in the parking lot. I didn't want anything oozing out of its shell on my car floor.

This right here is me in my moment of glory. On our way from Boothbay Harbor to Damariscotta, where we were going to eat dinner at the place with the best crab cakes in the world, the BFW and I made a pitstop to play mini-golf. I got a hole-in-one on a really hard hole. Because I am awesome.

If you look in the background, you can see Hendrick's Head Light, which is in Southport. The gray areas in the photo? All shells. Beautiful, tiny little spiral shells I scooped into my hand and brought back with me. (Mine didn't have anything ooze-y living in them.)

I could write poetry about The Lobster Shack in Cape Elizabeth. The poem would start by describing the beauty of the shack's location--on a granite cliff just above the waves of the Atlantic--and then move into the beauty of the shack's food, where lobster rules the menu. The Lobster Shack's lobster roll is my favorite in the state. But that's not the only thing that's good there. Clams, crab, mussels, whoopie pies--all delicious. But their strawberry-rhubarb pie? It's perfection.

I Wanted to Keep Them Around Just to Hear Them Say Their Vowels

Rachel and Dan were here for a few days last week, and those were some mighty fine days. I hadn't seen the dynamic Wisconsin duo for over a year, and it was refreshing to wake up every morning and have them puttering around my apartment. In fact, over the course of their stay, they proved themselves to be excellent house guests. It seemed like every time I turned around they were doing my dishes, taking out my trash, picking up my wet towels. I would've married them, if that type of thing was allowed.

I first met the pair when I was in grad school. Rachel was in my two-week crash course on How to Be a Instructor of College Composition before the fall 2003 semester began. On the first day of that training, we went around the room and introduced ourselves. Rachel said she was from Wisconsin (and thus believed you pronounced the word "bag" as "bayyg") and that she was engaged. This was good news for me. After all, I had a major crush on one of the grad student mentors in that course, and I had been assessing every girl in that room since the moment I walked in. And now that I knew a lot of the cute girls were either married or engaged or supposed lesbians, I felt better about my chances. Rachel put my mind at ease.

Rachel had a hellish first semester at grad school. She had a lot of work, a lot of stressful classes, and a lot of things to get done. She was in a different program than I was--she was an English education girl--and when we would badger her to go out with us, she would always turn us down. She finally came out at the end of our first semester, and she was kind of shocked by the whole group of us. We were a little wild, a little crazy, a little too familiar with each other, and we scared the crap out of her. I kept looking across the bar table and seeing her stricken face. I could tell she was thinking, Oh Jesus. What the hell have I gotten myself into?

But once we rolled her into the group, there was no stopping her. One of my fondest memories of Rachel was a night we were all at a friend's house, just sitting around a kitchen table, drinking, gossiping. Rachel had a few too many glasses of wine and then decided she was too drunk to handle a delicate wine stem anymore, so she got up, got herself a straw, and plopped it down into the glass and guzzled her Merlot that way. Resourceful. Half an hour later, she suggested we try on each others' clothes, so all the drunk and giggling girls clambered up the stairs and tore off their clothes and started pawing through our hostess's closet and trying on things like a T-shirt that had the words SQUEEZE ME painted across the chest. That night and the conversations and all the girly nonsense is not one I will ever, ever forget.

Of course, you don't get a Rachel without a Dan, and what a delightful little perk that is. Cute, funny, sweet (he learned one of Rachel's favorite David Gray songs and played it and sang it for her right before he proposed), and a pilot, this boy is a keeper. One of my favorite Dan memories is this: he took me flying. He took me flying more than once--Rachel refuses to fly with him anymore because she had the unlucky pleasure of being in the plane when Dan was simulating a impending crash and a subsequent recovery--but my first time was my favorite.

The flight was my birthday present. He and Rachel kidnapped me the morning after my big birthday celebration. They told me to get in the car. They told me not to ask any questions because I was getting a surprise. And then we showed up at the small town airport, and Dan took me out to his plane. It was fabulous. It was fabulous even though I'd woken up in a foul mood--the Wily Republican and I had gotten into it the night before--and it was fabulous even though I was hungover. My stomach might have turned over on itself once or twice, but it was worth it. It was one of the most glorious birthday presents I've ever gotten.

And it's been hard to live so far away from Rachel and Dan. I don't like being separated from them. Not one bit. So you can imagine how happy I was for the few days they were here. I tried to show them some of my favorite places, tried to convince them to move to Maine and take up residence in my spare bedroom. I don't think I was quite successful in that last effort--especially considering they definitely aren't in this apartment right now--but at least we were able to saturate ourselves with Maine-y goodness for a few days. Here are a few of the highlights:


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Freeport, The First Time

This weekend I went to Freeport.



Freeport is home to the flagship LL Bean store (and a giant boot). It is also home to gorgeous state parks, dozens of seafood carts, and outlets for stores like Burberry, J. Crew, Banana Republic, and Abercrombie & Fitch. And even though it's an outlet-town, it's very anti-outlet mall. It's not like those monstrous buildings that pipe in Michael Bolton's greatest hits and have food courts that boast Sbarros and Chinese restaurants that sell dry fried rice. In Freeport, all the outlets are housed in old buildings made of brick. The side streets are winding, the visitors speak mostly French, and there's the distinct smell of ocean in the air.

I spent half a day in the town, going from store to store, sneaking down alleys, ducking inside a coffee shop for a mug of chai. I considered buying lobster-shaped potato peelers and moose magnets. I dug through bins in the Banana Republic store so I could outfit the Boy From Work. It was the most lovely way to spend an afternoon, and I only scratched the surface of the town.

I didn't go to the wharf, to the ocean. I didn't stand on the rickety wooden docks and watch the sailboats leave for a day out on the water. I didn't watch people unbuckle their kayaks and ease them into the bay. But I will. I have an awful lot still to see.

And eat.

Tucked in alcoves every few hundred feet was another sidewalk stand selling portable snack food. If I were in New York City, they would be selling hot dogs or pretzels or hot nuts. But I wasn't in New York City. I was in Freeport, Maine, and these vendors were selling lobster rolls, crab rolls, and fried clams. I'd just eaten right before getting to Freeport, but every time I passed one of those stands and inhaled their salty steam I wanted to fork over all the money I had to get just a bite, just a nibble.

By the end of the day I was feeling relaxed and perfect and, despite stuffing myself before my arrival, starving. I left wanting more than ever to buy all my clothes at J. Crew, to dress myself in tweed, to come off looking smart and like I belonged to the Kennedys. By the end of the day I was so impressed and ensorcelled that I wanted to buy up all the argyle in the town. I wanted to soak large pinkish-red chunks of lobster in miniature vats of melted butter. I wanted to drive home along the winding river road, my car singing over the country asphalt, and I wanted to think, "I could do this every weekend."

And that's exactly what I did.