Wandering Down East

Penny the Prius and I were on our own today, especially since Verizon seems not to have discovered this remote corner of the U.S. and my phone was generally back to being just a handheld computer unconnected to the outside world. As a result my lunch date with Wren and Joe never happened.

After a brief and reassuring visit to a doctor in Machias (Penny isn't the only one who sometimes needs a minor repair) I started working my way down the Maine coast through endless pine woods and occasional coastal villages. For a framework I used the map Margie had lent me of the seven granite sculptures from the 2007 Schoodic International Sculpture Symposium, a juried competition among artists from Maine to Japan, with the winning artworks permanently installed in public spaces along the granite coast of Maine. My tour of three of the winners took me to "A Glimpse of the Moon" by Jesse Salisbury (from Maine) on the town green of tiny Steuben (that's Penny in the background next to the town offices),

...beautiful Schoodic Point in Acadia National Seashore (the coast itself proved more impressive than the sculpture, so you get this photo of a black "dam" of black lava that invaded cracks in the granite millions of years ago), and

..."Cleat" by Don Justin Meserve (also from Maine) rising from the harbor bottom in Winter Harbor.

I ended in Lamoine State Park, with this spectacular view across the bay to Cadillac Mountain on Mount Desert Island, home of the main section of Acadia National Seashore and the city of Bar Harbor. I hope to visit both before this week is over.

Back at Margie and Scott's house the setting sun had just come out between clouds and rainstorms and I took this to show you the gorgeous view from their lakefront home. Wow.