We drove to Kennebunkport via Route 1 and 35. On the way, we stopped at the drive-thru at Congdon’s Doughnuts, a local donut shop with yummy homemade donuts recommended by Frommers. There was a Dunkin Donuts next door, but who would go there? Congden’s had lots of different flavors such as blueberry (local from Maine) and honey dipped.
After parking in the Kennebunkport visitor lot, we saw a car accident on the road. There will be more to come about that later. Kennebunkport is a cute little town with lots of shops and rich teenagers abound. We bought locally made blueberry jam and honey. The jam was delicious (we had a sample).
Next we drove to Cape Elizabeth and Two Lights State Park. The park was relatively small but picturesque. It is located on the shore’s edge, with rocks that you could climb down to the water on. A lot of the rocks looked like petrified wood. The view and the breeze were refreshing. We had an impromptu picnic lunch on the rocks looking out into the ocean. We then drove to the lighthouse, but it was not much to look at.
Our next stop was Portland. While driving to the parking garage, we saw another car accident.. yes, the 2nd of the day. An amphibious tour bus/boat combo had moments before hit a car, smashing the car’s back window in the process. We spent a few hours walking around the Old Port and downtown areas, where there were lots of shops and bars. I had a locally brewed Brown Ale and some chowder at Gritty McDuff’s. We drove to the Eastern Promenade area which is basically a large park with great views overlooking Casco Bay. The view of the bay, with the boats in the harbor and the islands, made for a nice walk.
After Portland, we continued on to Freeport which is a town with lots of outlet stores. Not wanting to do much shopping on this trip, we decided only to go to the original L.L. Bean retail store which, according to the guide books, is open 24/7/365. The store, which sits on a large L.L Bean campus, was huge and had everything that you could possibly think of for the outdoors.
After touring the impressive store, we drove to our campground, Desert Dunes Campground which is supposedly next to a “desert”. We didn’t actually check out the desert, but the campground was fairly nice.
