4 Awesome Ideas For Staycation in Maine This Summer

Mainers, this is the Summer to discover your state or if you're "from away," (I hate that term, by the way....) you can get some great ideas too!

Over the weekend I went up to Maine to see my step-daughter's store that she recently purchased,  Owl's Head General Store in Owl's Head, Maine.  Maya has taken a huge step in her life and we could not be more proud of her and what she has taken on during a global pandemic.

I thought it would be a day of "normal" activities since we still all live in COVID-city.  Besides seeing Maya and her sister Audrey, I was surprised at how "Vacation-like" Vacationland felt.

We had lunch at Claws in Rockland, which deems itself, "The Lobster Capital of the World."  I'm not sure if that's true, but I can attest to their fried clams and clam chowder.  Both delicious options.  Speaking of lobster, I'm going to tell you something that not many New Englanders will admit to and certainly, no Mainer would ever say.  Lobster is lobster no matter where you go.  There's not a big difference.  Not sure if someone will come take away my "Yankee" card or what, but that's the truth.

We then went to The Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine.  Andrew Wyeth and his family have lived in Maine for decades.  I learned a lot about the artist including that he painted with something called Tempera, made with egg yolk and paint pigment, among other things.  He was a beautiful, sensitive soul who often sat with his models for days, weeks, sometimes months to learn about their personality so he could put it in to the portrait itself.  He did not paint by photographs which was the method of painting of his contemporaries at the time.  He felt he needed to know the models.

We had been to the Maine State Prison before, but it had been a while, so we decided to make a stop there in Thomaston.  The Gift Shop is filled with woodwork projects done by the prisoners themselves.  I love to support that kind of therapy for anyone, even people behind bars.  Anyway, I had forgotten that the movie based on the Stephen King novel, "The Shawshank Redemption" was based upon that prison.  The picture shown here hangs upon the wall of the gift shop.

That's not the only Hollywood-type location we made a visit to.  In 1993, the movie Forrest Gump shot one of it's scenes at Marshall Point Lighthouse in Port Clyde, Maine.  There is a picture in the visitor's shop of the day of the movie shoot.  My husband had to run, like Forrest, to the Lighthouse.  We pretended we didn't know who he was and walked the other way.