The islands of Midcoast Maine are among my favorite places to explore in New England.
From rocky shores and freezing cold waters to working harbors and sailing vessels, the area has been painted by some of the finest artists and the views offer a chance to relax in visual beauty and enjoy a rugged beauty like nowhere else on earth.
This past month, I was able to take my daughter on a short trip there where we visited an island 10 miles at sea to watch Atlantic Puffins.
We traveled past weather-ravaged rock outcroppings and lighthouses to Eastern Egg Rock on a small boat out of Port Clyde with about 40 others, then drove to Rockland to view a magnificent exhibit of paintings of those very islands we had just seen by one of this nation’s finest painters, Andrew Wyeth.
We were also able to enjoy some delicious seafood fresh from the boat in Tenants Harbor, discover a thriving art community in Rockland, stay at an elegantly simple inn on the water and explore the shops near the water in downtown Portland.
My daughter, Eliza came home from Salt Lake City for a week at the beginning of August primarily to ride the PanMass Challenge from Sturbridge, Mass. to Provincetown, Mass. She rode in the 90-degree heat and humidity close to 200 miles in two days and raised over $7,000 for cancer research in honor and memory of her father and my late husband, Tom.
After that hot and sticky ride, she came home to enjoy some rest in the Lakes Region but also asked if there was anything fun we could do together for a few days.
I wanted to visit Tenants Harbor, where Tom’s family first settled in the United States and where we had never visited.
While researching the area I also learned we could take a day trip to see Atlantic Puffins.
Seabird restoration began in this region in 1973 and it has been a tremendous success.
The Atlantic Puffin, one of four puffins in the world, is in the far southern range of their habitat, here and is mostly in places like Atlantic Canada in North America.
Dr. Stephen Kress launched the Puffin Project on a barren slab of rock about 10 miles at sea called Eastern Egg Rock and last year, it celebrated 40 years of success.
Removing chicks from Newfoundland and nursing them through, Kress and his team were able to establish a colony of Atlantic Puffin pairs which now number about 180.
The birds, which look like a small flying football, have “pufflings” one each to a nest, and begin to breed in colonies after the age of five. They can live into their 20s.
Kress was able to begin returning them to Muscongus Bay with the help of boom boxes to keep predators away. The natural caves under rocks protect the young.
The noisy island is also a summer home to many terns, guillemots, storm-petrels and are frequented by seals, and porpoise swimming by.
We saw all these and the success of Kress’s continued work which now includes estimates of as many as 3,000 puffins throughout Maine. They had disappeared more than a century ago because of overhunting.
Man is still their biggest threat with climate change making it harder for them to successfully fledge their pufflings in mid-August.
But Audubon’s Seabird Institute is working to better understand the puffins and has made great progress in much the same way New Hampshire has led the nation in the restoration of its Common Loon population.
There are more than a dozen operations offering puffin excursions out to various islands in Maine.
We chose the Monhegan Boat line out of Port Clyde, which provides a two-and-a-half-hour puffin tour in season for about $40 per person, plus a $20 tip.
The boat primarily offers service to Monhegan Island, a magnificently beautiful island that we could see from Eastern Egg Rock. Monhegan will be another adventure for another summer.
The puffin tours end in mid-August as that is when the puffins all leave to head out to sea until they return to nest in the spring.
We were lucky to see any as it was the end of the season.
Eliza and I left New Hampshire and headed east, making our first stop for a late lunch in Portland in the Old Port. There, we did a bit of shopping in addition to enjoying a good cup of clam chowder on the docks.
Then, we ventured north along busy Route 1 to Thomaston and turned right and drove down one of Maine’s long fingers to Tenants Harbor.
We stayed at the East Wind Inn. Our lovely room (#1) included a two-sided view of the harbor and a delicious breakfast of eggs benedict and home fries. The cost for all of it was about $400 a night with a tip.
In the evening, we walked around the town and checked out the working harbor with a view of an island that the locals said is still owned by artist Jamie Wyeth. He is a third-generation painter whose family is very well regarded for doing a lot for the region.
Dinner at the tavern in the inn was delicious. I had lobster ravioli while Eliza had a lobster roll.
The next morning, after enjoying a cup of coffee in one of the Adirondack chairs overlooking the harbor, we headed to Port Clyde where we visited Marshall Lighthouse and its museum. The lighthouse was made famous in the movie Forest Gump.
We then headed to the boat docks for our voyage, which included seeing three puffins in flight over the boat.
After returning to the harbor, we headed to Rockland, about a half hour away, and enjoyed the Farnsworth Museum on Main Street with its exhibit Andrew Wyeth, Islands in Maine. It runs through Oct. 16. It is worth the trip to just see these beautiful works of art, inspired by the very islands we saw, including Benner Island.
We also stopped by the small puffin museum in Rockland, which offers a Wednesday night lecture series.
The trip was short, sweet and lovely, and memorable.
And that is what I did on my summer vacation.
The following are links to the places we visited and so enjoyed. I hope it inspires you to head out to see the islands of mid-coast Maine.
https://www.farnsworthmuseum.org/exhibition/andrew-wyeth-islands-in-maine/
https://monheganboat.com/special-cruises/puffin-cruise/
https://www.eastwindinn.com/
https://www.marshallpoint.org/
Paula Tracy’s first big hike was in 1975 with classmates from Concord up Mount Lafayette with teacher and outdoor enthusiast Ned Bergman. She was 13 and was immediately captured by the wonders of New Hampshire’s great outdoors. It would lead to a lifetime love of exploring the woods, water, and wildlife in the Granite State. As a staff reporter, for 25 years at the NH Union Leader and then for WMUR.com, she has written about the subject extensively and continues here with the hope of connecting New Hampshire’s residents with their own backyard.