During our adventure on the 18th annual barn tour offered by the Iowa Barn Foundation last weekend, we found some unadvertised sights including an old motel, cafe and vintage “service station” along Iowa’s stretch of the famous Lincoln Highway, the nation’s first transcontinental road for automobiles connecting the east and west coasts, opened in 1913. (Fun fact: it was also the first national memorial to President Abraham Lincoln, predating D.C.’s Washington Memorial by several years.)
The plain white Colo Motel looks pretty basic. Rooms run about $50 a night. The Niland’s Cafe looks like it has been restored or redone in a nostalgic vein, complete with a sign outside advertising “hot coffee and Kool cigarettes.” It was closed when we arrived (open until 2 p.m. on Sundays) but we peaked inside through the windows and it looks like a time capsule. Word has it the food is pretty good. I’d like to return.
The restored 1940’s era “service station” definitely is no longer functional. The pumps are vintage fire-engine red contraptions and the gas costs 17 and 8/10ths cents a gallon, including tax. One of the explanatory plaques placed around the crossroads let us know that Reed’s Standard Service Station operated from the 1930’s until 1967. It replaced an earlier station nearby opened in the late 1920’s. The station’s design includes a flared roof line, large canopy and other features linked to the Arts and Crafts design movement of the early 20th century.
We also happened upon a tiny pioneer cemetery on the edge of the road, near the town of Rhodes, surrounded by what appeared to be a fledgling Christmas tree farm. Some of the grey/white marble stones were so worn, we couldn’t make out the engraving. But several mentioned pioneers from the 1860’s, including one that read “1869 Still born dau”…which I presume was a still born daughter.
We took the long, scenic road from Damariscotta, which went along the coast although you’d never know it. We were surrounded by trees. It was a tight squeeze climbing up the few steps inside the lighthouse with my broken arm but worth it for the view. We could see all the say to Monhegan Island, ten miles away, which we were told is unusual.
We arrived in Portland in time to take the 2:45 Casco Bay Mail Ferry which goes to several islands and offers a great view back at the city of Portland. It was bit overcast and drizzled a little but a good ride, although we’re a bit spoiled after our Norway fjord ferry rides. 
On the way to stay with our friend Lisa from Wichita, we stopped near the ferry terminal at Standard Bakery to pick up some goodies for dinner. Lisa lives in Cousin’s Island, technically in Yarmouth, and we had a lovely reunion (after 30 plus years). She walked us over to her beach at sunset and then cooked us lobsters (plopped wriggling into hot water) with corn on the cob.
Dinner tonight was totally different, at Claws, a popular (for good reason) lobster shack where we ordered at the window and got a goofy plastic lobster with our order number on it. We ate a tray full of seafood – lobster bisque, lobster roll, drunken mussels in a garlicky broth – all excellent and fresh tasting, eaten on a deck with picnic tables and portable heaters. And a lovely view of the harbor.
This morning, we followed our Airbnb hosts recommendation and drove to Latte Beach in Camden and then walked the back way to Rockport and back. Turned out to be six miles. Lovely scenery, walking on Bay View Road past gorgeous old and new mansions set on the water, then past an old farm with white-belted cattle and then to a pretty “children’s” open air chapel. 
I am glad it rained this morning because it led us to drive backroads through the wood about an hour west to Waterville where we thoroughly enjoyed the Colby College Art Museum, Maine’s largest art museum with a really nice collection of American art from flat folk art portraits to abstract Jackson Pollack, plus rooms full of giant portraits by Alex Katz (who lives in nearby Lincolnville, I happened to read last week in a New Yorker profile.)
It was fun to ride on narrow winding roads thru the wood past the occasional shingled farmhouse, organic farm stand, brightly painted hippie VW van, charming general store and world famous restaurant (The virtually hidden Lost Kitchen in the out-of-the-way village of Freedom, Me.)
We ate a light lunch earlier at a tiny Lebanese place in downtown Waterville, a town with that quixotic feel of a faded factory town with a fancy private college. Back in Camden, we finally walked around the town which has lots of interesting shops and boutiques in well-tended old buildings. The harbor is full of boats, from small pleasure boats to tall schooners. We learned that our Airbnb hosts used to make their living taking tourists out into Penobscot Bay on their 50 foot sailboat (which they also sailed to the Caribbean). I am so glad we came to Camden in particular and mid coast Maine in general.
Mystery solved. I think. The picturesque seaside town in Maine that was known for its photography program -that we stumbled upon some 35 years ago – appears to be Rockport. It definitely wasn’t Rockland, which is bigger. We had an easy drive up the coast from Boston. About 3.5 hours to Camden but we stopped en route, first in Freeport where we dodged the hordes of shoppers at LL Bean and a whole lot more and got a takeaway lamb deli sandwich at Bow Street Market (which our Maine transplant friend Lisa recommended) then onto Brunswick where we did a quick drive by Bowdoin College and a cool old building downtown that’s used as an arts center.
In Rockland, we parked near the harbor at a long breakwater with gorgeous views of the bay and a white sailboat out in the blue water. But it is made of slabs of granite with large deep gaps in between and after a short distance, I chickened out and we walked back. I am still a little shaky walking with my recovering broken arm and last thing I need is to fall. We took a lovely back way to Rockport where I had my ah ha! Moment and then another back road through the woods past gorgeous houses overlooking the water and fields with “white-belted” black cows (that have a white band around their middles). Downtown Camden looks charming — our Airbnb definitely is.
We found our host tending to spectacular dahlias (my favorite) in the little garden in front of our sweet one room wood cottage (the birds nest). Inside it’s decorated with nice little touches, a pretty quilt and curtains and little tasteful prints. I am sitting on a cushioned Glider on our red brick patio with table. It’s chilly but clear skies (for now) and I definitely need to get a sweater or sweatshirt. So happy to be here.
TakeBetsywithyou 