Maine Camping: Gourmet Style

I’ve preferred to plan my travel calendar outside of the ‘US Holiday’ dates inked onto calendars. Traveling off-date meant I avoided the crush of travelers hitting the roadways and clogging up the best sights and restaurants.

Being free of the constraints of calendar holidays was an advantage of having a non-traditional job and no kids. Recognizing I am really more of an introvert than an extrovert, off-date travel fed my psychological need for solo time or with only small groups.

So, I often spent my Labor Day’s at home.

Labor Day in Maine

Apparently, this year, I forgot my preference to avoid joining the mass exodus of people chasing the last hurrah of summer. On the day after Memorial Day, a day marked by the mass exodus of people ushering the first flicker of summer, a day my hyper-crowd-avoidance super power should have alerted me not to make travel plans with crowd, I booked a campsite on the Maine coast for Labor Day weekend.

I hoped to avoid the worst of traffic by cleverly booking our travel days on Saturday and Tuesday. This was a marginally successful strategy. It seemed everyone else aimed to be just as clever on Saturday. We also returned on Monday anyway because we had a motorcycling trip to prep for (more on that in a future post).

Surprisingly, or likely not surprisingly at all, I was typically a very fastidious planner when it came to travelling (read: super Type A and really persnickety about packing and planning early). Well, as with choosing my travel dates, I also broke with my usual preferences. Throughout the week, I quelled my nagging habitual need to plan, plan, plan. Although, I made a packing list over dinner and beers one evening, I did not pack a single item until Saturday morning.

So, Saturday morning, we dug our camping gear out of storage, tossed some clothes in a bag, loaded up the car with gear and our dog then joined the mass exodus of people heading north on I-95 for the Maine Coast.

Camping in Maine (aka Vacationland)

Maine’s state slogan is Vacationland. During the unofficial last weekend of summer, it certainly lived up to this. People from all over the region got in line and slowly inched their way up the coast. They hunted out lobster shacks, lighthouses and sandy beaches overlooking a sparkling Atlantic Ocean.

We hurried past the early tourist stops around Kittery and York and the rich sprawling compounds around York and Ogunquit. We skipped the cute and kitschy downtowns of Kennebunk and Kennebunkport. Our destination was past the hipness of Portland and beyond the outdoor retail strip of Freeport. As we continued north, the traffic slowly dropped away and we entered the quieter part of Vacationland around the Casco Bay – the ragged, bearded section of Maine where the coastline follows a drunken, jagged line of peninsulas and islands that bleed into the Atlantic Ocean.

On a stretch of coast that people often snooze through as they leave Casco Bay on their way to Penobscot Bay and Bar Harbor, laid Georgetown Island. The island was south of Bath and our home for the weekend was situated on the southernmost tidal mudflat of the island. This was Sagadahoc Bay Campground.

There were rentable cabins and trailers on the campground, but we aimed for at least a modicum of ‘roughing it.’ It was, after all, our only camping outing this year. So, we pitched a tent in the last ocean view spot. We hardly escaped the wilderness among very crowded and busy loop of sites. I counted 15 tents obstructing our ocean view and another 50 or more behind us. Yes, this was why I usually avoided Labor Day camping.

That’s okay, we weren’t here for the accommodations. We were here for the food, which is really what this post was supposed to be about.

Campfire Lamb Burgers, Roasted Zucchini & Heirloom Tomato Salad

After inflating our queen-sized air mattress inside the tent, it was time for fire and food. Unfortunately, in my last minute packing, I didn’t bring extra bowls or plates for mixing ingredients or a cutting board for chopping veggies. We improvised. We blended pesto and ground lamb from Chestnut Farms CSA in a plastic bag for burgers. We chopped vegetables from Waltham Fields Community Farm on a food storage lid. We made salad in that same container. Fortunately, we did remember the beer. So we were stocked with some of the best beer in the country from Hill Farmstead in Vermont. That’s right, we were roughing it.

While Jethro didn’t get any pesto lamb burgers, he did get to pretend he was a wilderness dog for a bit too (besides, who doesn’t like a dog video?).

Maine Lobsters in Maine’s Sea Water

The water was cold in Maine. It always was. The warm ocean current of the Gulf Stream just missed the coast of Maine and left the waters no warmer than 68°F in the summer. However, our mudflat was warm and perfect for wearing a dog out (More dog video! Man, this post has it all!).

However, we didn’t go to Maine to swim.

I don’t think we even went to camp. Camping was just a means to an end.

We came to Maine to eat lobsters while perching on a red-painted pier overlooking a chain of Maine Islands. We came to crack into crustaceans that were freshly boiled in sea water and sip white wine from plastic cups.

We came for a visit to our favorite Lobster Pound – Five Island Lobster Company. It sat at the terminus end of Route 127 on the eastern side of Georgetown Island. The deck overlooked the five islands of Hen, Malden, Mink, Crow and another unnamed island.

I sometimes thought the lobster I got from the lobster pound near my home was just as good as this. Then, every time I went here, I was reminded, it was not. Maybe it was the view. . . maybe it was the sunshine. . . maybe it was the wine. . . maybe it was the sea water. . . or maybe it was just that much better.

“Lobster Deconstructed.”

Charcuterie & Campfire

After a day of indulging on lobsters, touring the Maine Coast, taking in the sights (like this amazing inflatable beast), sipping Moderation Brews, Brunswick’s hidden gem of a nano-brewery, we were too pooped and too sunburned to campfire cook.

While I did manage to forget a few key camping items, I did not forget to pack our artisan cheese stash from Jasper Hill Farms in Vermont. We scored an amazing tepanade bread from Treats of Maine in Wicasset and adding a cured duck breast found in the cooler at Five Island Farm, a fine little gourmet farm store on the way Five Island Lobster Company where we also picked up wine, we had the makings of a indulgent campfire charcuterie plate.

So, despite not really finding solitude on a Labor Day on the Maine Coast, we found a fine gourmet weekend. We also managed to wear out a slightly hyper active dog along the way.

It wasn’t glamping, but it sure was good.

Happy Cooking, Camping and Dog Napping!