Midwest Adventures: Missouri Home To All Things Truman
Pure Portland
East Coast's Version Offers Best Of Maine's Seaside Scenery, Dining
By SUSAN BAYER WARD Special to the Journal & Topics Newspapers
This appealing seaside town is filled with surprising delights including bird watching in the local cemetery and mud roaches---er, lobsters---running rampant.
"I'll have a boiled mud roach with drawn butter and all the trimmings!" That's what you'd be ordering today if the colonists of Portland, Maine, had their way.
We call the succulent delicacies they were referring to lobsters, but early settlers despised the crustaceans considering them poverty fare---unappetizing provender only fit for prisoners, indentured servants and children. (Some servants in Massachusetts actually rebelled at this harsh treatment; they inked a clause into their contracts limiting the serving of "mud roaches" to three times a week.)
Who knew! Modern-day tourists flock to Portland, the state's largest city with a cozy-size population of 64,000, where they happily inhale boiled and baked lobsters, lobster salad on a toasted bun, lobster thermidor, lobster chowder and numerous other lobster-based creations.
But, that's not the only reason visitors seek out Portland. Maine's most interesting, attractive and vital seaport town, it contains one of the few working waterfronts left in America; an enviable arts, restaurant and shopping scene; one of the best deepwater ports on the East Coast with attendant lighthouses and myriad sea-based activities; and that rocky coastal scenery that says, like nothing else, This Is Maine.
Once a down-at-heel, blue-collar town, Portland benefited in recent decades from major revitalization projects that now showcase its natural attributes and rich seafaring history. The National Historic Trust took notice, and in 2003, when it honored 12 United States' communities "that offer Americans enjoyable natural, historic, aesthetic, recreational and cultural experiences," the Greater Portland area appeared on the list. It was quite a coup.
So, what's so alluring about Portland, Maine?
To get your bearings, first hop aboard a narrated trolley tour as erudite driver-guides share Portland history, lore and sights making numerous stops along the way. Several parks afford terrific views of sprawling, sparkling Casco Bay where all manner of watercraft go about their business. On the promontory above, handsome Victorian homes line up in orderly rows--a legacy of the Great Fire of 1866 when much of Portland burned to the ground and ornate 19th-Century Victorian structures replaced the demolished buildings.
There's a must-visit to famed Portland Head Lighthouse, one of the most photographed and photogenic lights in America. Commissioned by President George Washington in 1791, the still-working lighthouse also possesses an attendant museum full of seafaring paraphernalia including mesmerizing old photos of spare, bearded mariners.
The trolleys always drive along the city's extensive waterfront area, and it's here you should return for a singular adventure. Several waterfront-walking tours take visitors behind the scenes to experience the heart and soul of Portland where local fishermen, their boats and attendant industries produce a fascinating, colorful clamor.
You will probably visit Captain Tom Martin and his boat, the Lucky Catch, tied up at the wharf. On his 90-minute Casco Bay cruise, visitors live the life of a lobsterman. But, if you don't choose to join the cruise, and opt to stay pier-side, Captain Tom still demonstrates some of the things you would have learned out on the water: how to bait a trap, measure a lobster to see if it's a "short," even sex a lobster! (You want to throw back breeding females and the sexing business is not as hard to figure out as you might think.)
There are masses of trim fishing craft tied up along the wharves, and brightly painted buoys and traps line the docks.
Out on one of the piers, visitors pour into Maine Lobster Direct to order live lobsters which the company ships almost anywhere in America. A genial staff member fills you in on everything lobster while holding aloft a couple of wriggling crustaceans for your inspection and some amusing photographs.
(All manner of sea life end up on the waterfront, but lobsters take pride of place as 90 percent of America's lobsters---some 40 million pounds annually---are trapped in Maine.)
By all means take a boat cruise on Casco Bay, a port so deep and protected some 33 large cruise ships visit yearly, decanting 48,000 passengers for shore excursions.
During a several-hour small-boat excursion, you will motor by historic forts, several of Portland's seven lighthouses, masses of dancing watercraft and gaggles of harbor seals. These nicely narrated cruises also pass picturesque inhabited and uninhabited isles that make up the Calendar Islands. An early explorer named them because he thought there were 365 islands in all---one for each day of the year. In truth there are 785 if you count small rocky outcrops.
Your captain, in a wholly engaging and distinctive "Down East" accent, points out Mark Island, which sports a stone tower built to memorialize shipwrecked sailors. To this day it's stocked with food and water---succor for any unfortunates who founder in these waters.
If you pine for a longer waterborne adventure, you might consider taking the high-speed ferry---called The CAT---on a jaunt to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. A smooth, 5½ -hour ride brings passengers to this beautiful Canadian town for some lively touring. The 750-passenger and car ferry currently schedules departures on Fridays and Sundays and boasts an all-day café, several bars, duty-free shop, TV-movie lounge, casino and viewing decks. (Return trips from Yarmouth to Portland run on Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays.)
During the season, from late May to mid-October, these popular cruises are usually fully booked.
The sprawling warehouse district, once derelict and bleak, hunkers down behind the waterfront.
A mammoth restoration project revitalized the Old Port area where trendy shops, galleries, restaurants and pubs now fill the renovated buildings. Artists and craft folk have taken up residence as well.
Appealing elements of the original Old Port---brick buildings, cobblestone streets and Victorian streetlights---remain, and visitors happily mender through its environs poking into one-of-a-kind shops and intriguing watering holes like Bull Feeney's pub which salutes the Irish immigrants who helped build Portland. There's also a restaurant and bar with the puzzling moniker, Three Dollar Deweys.
The restaurant's trenchant tale appears on T-shirts sold in the bar and goes something like this: On long Yukon nights, lonely men would seek out houses of ill repute and were told by the madam: One dollar---lookie, two dollar---feelie, and three dollar---well, you can guess how the restaurant got its name (the connection between Portland, Maine, and Alaska's Yukon tenuous but appealing nonetheless).
Three Dollar Deweys attracts locals and tourists alike---the ambience, food and drink quite good.
Other parts of Portland are equally attractive offering sensational ocean views, charming "pocket parks" and quaint shops like Maxwell's Pottery, not to mention an eatery called O'Naturals where diners' favorites include a slice of killer-great wild bison meatloaf and the best flatbread sandwiches anywhere.
A converted car ferry located on Long Wharf houses DiMillo's Floating Restaurant, a popular place to dine enhanced by dramatic harbor views--the ideal spot to order that boiled lobster you've been longing for while watching the setting sun sizzle into the sea.
Dawn brings another kind of quirky, only-in-Portland adventure: a trek with the Maine Audubon birding folk to Portland's vast, historic Evergreen Cemetery, especially during two weeks in May when the spring migrants---most notably warblers---congregate en masse.
Birding in a cemetery, you cry? But, of course. At dawn you meet your Audubon naturalist in Evergreen, peaceful and full-to-the-brim with conifers and low shrubs---the ideal cover for our feathered friends.
At first light, cars line the cemetery's winding byways, their owners on-site not to attend a funeral but to clap binoculars on a Cape May warbler, scarlet tanager or red-eyed vireo.
If you're not a member of the Audubon Society, you're asked to pay a suggested donation of $5 (though not required) for the 7 to 9 a.m. get-togethers held amongst fog-encircled gravestones enlivened by masses of darting birdlife. (Maine Audubon conducts a number of bird-watching events throughout the year, one of the most popular--July sunset cruises to view breeding colonies of the delightful Atlantic puffin.)
Finally, be sure to make your way outside town, for in a 15-mile radius of Portland you'll see stunning stretches of rugged coastline as well as chummy little New England hamlets like Freeport---home to that Valhalla of outdoor gear, L.L. Bean.
Here you'll find Bean's flagship store, open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, year-round, and chockablock with the best sporting goods available. Courteous and knowledgeable salespeople make visitors welcome, and they assure you that, yes, quite a few people do show up at 3 a.m. to shop!
Besides their line of outdoor paraphernalia, L.L. Bean also hosts a wonderful enterprise called Walk-On Adventures. For the reasonable sum of $15, you can walk into the store and join 1 ½ - to 2 ½ -hour courses held nearby on their Outdoor Discovery School grounds. Here, experts instruct you in the art of fly-casting, archery, sporting-clay shooting and more. (All gear needed for the course is provided free of charge.)
If You Go:
For more information, contact: Convention & Visitors Bureau of Greater Portland (www.gotoportland.com; 800-306-4193).