Finally...sure signs of spring in April! By mid-month, the sun's up well before 6 a.m., and there's still lots of light after 7 p.m. Crocuses are blooming, daffodils too in hot spots, tulip magnolias are showing big creamy buds, grass is greening, and forsythia is threatening to bloom.
Our neighbor strongly advised us to visit nearby Scarborough Marsh, a 3,100 acre estuary that is the largest salt marsh in the state, comprising tidal marsh, salt creeks, freshwater marsh and uplands. The marsh, particularly important for wildlife as a resting, breeding and feeding ground, is about a 20-minute drive south of us.
First stop was the free Audubon center on the marsh with lots of information, guided hikes, and kayak rentals, in season, of course. I walked across the road from the center to sit on a bench to see what I could see, and as I was sitting down I startled a woodcock, my first ever, whose quick yakkety take-off startled me as well. No photo, but here's what it looked like.
Why did the turkeys cross the road?
Lots of birds, white and grey egrets, geese, ducks, cormorants
And then we looked beyond this tree to see two dark lumps in the water...
...seals!!! My very first ever seals-in-the-wild sighting!!!
We made eye contact!
The marsh is bisected by a former railroad right-of-way that's now owned by a natural gas company. Pipelines run under the well-maintained hiking/biking trail which is part of the East Coast Greenway, a developing 2,500-mile path connecting Maine to Florida.
We stumbled on a delicious, healthy breakfast place, the Camp Ellis General Store, that also offered charter boat activities. Loved the fourth bullet...
Mouth of the Saco River at Camp Ellis. Kayaks are beautiful but the speed of the river running into the sea was daunting; it wouldn't be difficult to be swept out if you hit the tide at the wrong time in one of these.
Just north of the marsh is the Len Libby chocolate store/factory, home of the world's largest chocolate moose (get it?). It's milk chocolate, the bears dark chocolate, and the water white chocolate.
The Portland Museum of Art owns Winslow Homer's home/studio on Prout's Neck, about 1/2 hours from downtown Portland. You can't just show up here as the Neck is a gated community of VERY well-to-do private homes (Glenn Close's husband, a Mainer, has one, i.e.); we signed on for a tour and learned a lot about Maine's most favorite son in the visual arts world from our volunteer guide.
Homer, an extremely private person who never married, lived here alone for 30+ years and looked out on this scene daily. His style of sea-based landscapes really developed while he was here. Homer was never "trained;" his skills were entirely self-taught and developed and changed depending on where he lived and worked, both in the U.S. and Europe.
His famous "Weatherbeaten" was based on this view, although our guide mentioned he did not include the offshore island in this version. He was a prolific painter. The Museum has some of his works, but the vast majority are in private hands or those of much more financially endowed museums.
He lived amazingly modestly here. Died on this "bed" in 1910, age 74.
We stumbled into this furniture store downtown one day to learn it was originally the factory where the nation's first chewing gum was produced.
It was fascinating/creepy inside, as the store simply moved into the building without updating/upgrading any of the interior. Walls, support beams, windows, elevators, doorways, offices, stairways are just as they were when the factory was operational, a good visit if you're into that sort of stuff, and the elderly sales guys are happy to share some gum history stories.
