One Morning in Maine

My picture taking habits mean that a week long vacation can easily translate into enough material for a month's worth of blog posts. I'll try not to go that far, but today I will begin a little break from regularly scheduled programming with the first of my pictures from Maine, beginning with a few days spent in Bar Harbor.

For anyone unfamiliar with the area, Bar Harbor is the biggest town on Mt. Desert Island, located about halfway up the coast of Maine. The island is home to several smaller villages and, most notably, Acadia National Park, where mountains and dense woods lead right up to rocky cliffs that drop down into the ocean. The entire area has an active, outdoorsy, lace up your hiking shoes kind of vibe, and the town itself is bustling throughout the day and night, with lots of outdoor restaurants, unique shops, a big dog culture-- we saw pets accompanying their humans at nearly every restaurant we visited.


(And as a reward for sticking with me through all of these pictures, I'll tell you about a celebrity sighting at the end of this post!)

Now for the promised reward:

One afternoon, my parents and I drove over to Northeast Harbor, another village on Mt. Desert Island. Smaller and sleepier than Bar Harbor, it's known as an enclave of summer homes of the wealthy. It has one main street with a handful of quaint shops, bakeries, and antique stores. As we walked along it, a man and a woman were coming along the sidewalk in the opposite direction. The man caught my eye because he was dressed in what would be a fashion conscious New Yorker's idea of New England chic: slim fitting white pants, a navy polo, and boat shoes. Just as they reached a point along side of us, the woman said something and as soon as we heard her voice, both my dad and I realized...it was Martha Stewart, one of the celebrities who's known to have a house in the area! A quick peek over our shoulders confirmed it was her, and my mom identified her male companion as Kevin Sharkey, the creative directors on her show and namesake of Martha's French bulldog.

After looking in a couple of shops, we were heading back down the street when we spot them coming back toward us in the opposite direction. I posed for a quick fake picture so my mom could secretly take one of Martha, but she chickened out when she felt Martha's stare. As they came closer, I did what anyone would do when feigning celebrity nonchalance- started talking loudly about one of the bakeries on the street, waving and pointing my arms, nearly hitting Martha in the face. Then, just at the moment they passed us, my dad stepped up to the plate:

"Good afternoon, Martha," he said.

"Hi, how are you?" she replied, politely smiling and nodding and continuing on her way.

This ranks pretty high on my list of celebrity sightings, although it still wasn't my favorite thing that happened that day. Intrigued? Stay tuned....