2010-07-09

Ogunquit 2010 - the travelogue

Back from Ogunquit.

If I hadn't been missing my furkids so terribly, and if finances had been a bit more agreeable, I'd still be there. Boston is as hot as a crotch right now, and getting somewhere cooler would require a couple of trains, and probably a bus, depending on how many stupid people with whom I'd deign to share my personal space.

This was our second time up there, so we were armed with the knowledge of places to avoid (Bessie's) and places to revisit (Spoiled Rotten). Happily, the weather was damn near spectacular the entire time, save for one grotesquely humid day. Even then, that was far better than last year, when the weather (50's and rainy) was eclipsed gloom-wise only by the inescapable coverage of the Michael Jackson funeral.

We arrived on the 4th, in time to head down to the beach to watch the fireworks.

This was a big ol' treat for us, despite our living in a city lauded for its Independence Day firework displays. Let me tell you something about July 4th in Boston: it's a large-scale demonstration of mob-scene clusterbation. I say this as someone who has, in point of fact, sat on the Esplanade from 8 o'clock in the morning to 11 o'clock at night, for the sole purpose of "being there" for about 75 minutes of "entertainment." I've done it, yea, and I care not to do it again. It was much nicer to view them from our cheapie beach chairs on the pristine sands of Ogunquit Beach, littered only with strange driftwood installations:

I was also happy to see that Ogunquit doesn't just remind folks to pick up after themselves, but to do so while striving to be overall better human beings:

These noble trash receptacles were everywhere. I tried to collect 'em all.

The big happening in town this month is the Ogunquit Playhouse's production of "The Sound of Music," featuring Rex Smith as Captain Von Trapp.

Well, dip me in Solid Gold and take my breath away, chickens. You know you're getting old when REX SMITH is playing outwardly-stern-but-really-soft-and-squishy Austrian patriarchs. I was sorely tempted to go see this -- the thought alone of Rex blubbering through "Edelweiss" would be worth the ticket price -- but ultimately decided against it. Let me cling to my youth just a little bit longer, Ogunquit Playhouse. Perhaps we'll make a special trip up there in September to see Sally Struthers in "Chicago."

On the gruesome hot day, we decided to take a scenic cruise to Cape Neddick and back, to see the utterly charming and bucolic Nubble Lighthouse. It was every bit as charming and bucolic as I expected.

What I DIDN'T expect was the creepy streak exhibited by our otherwise perky guide, a young woman with the lean frame, caramel skin, sun-kissed tresses, and preppy garb of one who spends her days on boats. I knew many such girls growing up in a town of boating fanatics, and they generally treated me with the bemused air of someone who's just seen a poodle in a sweater.

This girl was not like that. She was a complete FREAK, and went into quite lurid detail about an entirely different lighthouse, one barely visible through the haze at about 6 miles southeast of the cute and charming lighthouse we'd paid to go see.

"If you squint, you can see what looks like a stick out to the left of the boat," she chirped. "That's the Boon Island Lighthouse. In 1710, it was the site of a kinda famous shipwreck. The captain and crew were stranded there for 24 days with little more to eat than seaweed. They resorted to eating the ship's carpenter after he'd died of starvation." She paused, and then happily continued: "It was the first recorded incident of cannibalism in America!"

Wheee!

This was a girl after my own heart. She recommended Kenneth Roberts' fictionalized account of the wreck, "Boon Island," which I promptly scarfed up and devoured (pun intended) in a little under two days.

I had found my new obsession. Coming home, I fired up the laptop and read everything I could about this desolate, depressing pile of rocks off the coast of Maine. The only things that thrive out there are barnacles. It's such a horrible place that there have been no keepers since 1978. The lighthouse itself is totally automated.

Champion that I am of all things ugly and ignored, I have become utterly smitten with this unadorned, bleak lighthouse. I love it so much, I'm going to become a citizen of the Republic of Boon Island. Oh yes I am.

It's like the stunted, redheaded stepchild of Maine lighthouses. Most postcards don't feature it. Certainly they're not sticking miniature replicas of it in snowglobes. I know because I looked in EVERY GIFT SHOP from Perkins Cove to Ogunquit Village. And that's a goddamn shame, because I can't be the ONLY person who would totally buy one.

So here, with my own pitiful Photoshopping skillz, is the Boon Island Lighthouse Snowglobe, to display and cherish...until somebody smartens up and acknowledges this untapped market.

Hands down the best part of this vacation.

lisamcc at 1:06 p.m.

previous | next