From the East End to Down East - Part I

Going to Princeton to bring one niece to and from camp was one thing; going to Maine to visit the other was another thing altogether! My ten-year-old niece’s first few letters home talked about how homesick and miserable she was. In true Allan Sherman fashion, she started to like it more, but also requested a visitor. I was nominated; by the time we decided (on a Saturday) that I would indeed go, there was a small window of time – I could leave the next day, but I had to be back on Tuesday, because the Southampton Writers Conference started that Wednesday. If not for that, I might have stayed in Maine longer, maybe even gone to Nova Scotia or New Brunswick (Campobello would have been a nice visit, but this was before I went to Hyde Park), or I would have spent more time in Acadia National Park, a place that had long been near the top of my unwritten list.

I spent Saturday lining up a rental car and bed and breakfasts and looking at maps (in retrospect, I wish I had taken my Rand McNally with me – it was a valuable companion for my Drive Across America but I had kind of forgotten about it). You may recall that I haven’t done a lot of driving in the New York area – well, same for New England, so this really had an unexpected element of adventure. It happened that a visitor who goes to Maine frequently was over, and she told me about the inland route, I-395 through Connecticut, that mostly avoids I-95, and then connects with 495 in Massachusetts, avoiding Boston. Since I’m Amtraking it this year, I had briefly considered taking the train as far as it goes (Portland), but it wasn’t practical – and since these are states I didn’t cover in the Drive Across America, all the more reason to drive.


I left Southampton at 7:30 am, heading northeast – through Sag Harbor and North Haven to the Shelter Island south ferry, across that island to the north ferry, and then out to Orient Point. When I did my North Fork exploration last year, I watched the ferry leave the tip of Long Island for New London, not thinking that there would be a time when I would take it. So by 9:30 I was on my third ferry of the day! I love boat rides. The New London ferry takes an hour and a half, with boat traffic, islands, lighthouses and shoreline industry and homes for your viewing pleasure.


By 11:00 I was back on the mainland – I zipped through Connecticut and Massachusetts and barely noticed New Hampshire. I had some podcasts to listen to and bought the audio book of “Nickel and Dimed,” a sobering look at how difficult it is to live on the minimum wage. And then I got to Maine! I forget how big a state Maine is – the state line of my last state was only about the halfway point of my trip! And at right about the state line, it started to rain. I had another four hours or so before I got to Belfast. Along the way, I went through Augusta. Another state capital! I decided I could detour and see the capitol building itself.


Belfast is a beautiful town, with historic buildings and some artists-colony aspects to it – it was fortunate that the town nearest the camp was this one. I checked in, went down to the water, took a walk around the two main streets, ate dinner, and slept the sleep of someone who had a nine-hour drive.