We went to Ocean Park for an early-morning parade on the 4th.
It's a tiny beach community right near Old Orchard. It was a little old-fashioned parade with marching bands and lots of candy being thrown.
I love how this woman was unabashedly in NEED of coffee.
Despite it being fairly populated, there is a good amount of preserved wetlands in the area.
There's lots of interesting birds as well- ibis and osprey and gulls and pipers. Also, there's a really nice stretch of sand right there. It gets a little crowded and it's the most developed bit of coastline in the state. Still, it's nice to be able to run to the other side of the dunes and grab a lobster roll and a cold drink.
The water never really warms up in the Gulf of Maine. Because of Cape Cod diverting the currents, the gulf stream misses the area entirely. Occasionally, you'll get a nice storm out to sea which pushes in some warmer water, but the rest of the time you are guaranteed to suffer. You have to be really brave and hot enough to think that getting slapped around by brain-freeze inducing and foot-numbing waves sounds like a good idea.
After getting dizzy and dehydrated from too much sun, it's good to go home and whip up a nice dinner on the grill. We really try hard to eat our weight in lobster rolls, but there's so much other good local food as well: fresh peas and potatoes from the garden, shrimp, haddock, crab, mussels and scallops. Strawberries were in season and were particularly sweet this year.
People in Maine really take advantage of the nice weather. Winters are harsh and dark but summers can be absolutely brilliant. Life is lived outside every moment that frostbite isn't an immanent threat.
That is if you don't mind the bird-sized mosquitoes too much.
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