Tramel's travel blog: Goodbye to Maine, hello New Hampshire
Traveling has its perks. Like sitting shoreside Saturday on Peaks Island, just off Portland, Maine, eating lobster rolls, watching the sailboats and enjoying the cool Atlantic breeze.
Traveling has its pains. Like Southwest cancelling your flight to Chicago on Saturday evening, with no more available flights from Portland until Monday and all the rental cars sold out.
More on the pains later. You didn’t come here to read about our problems. You came here to read about the pleasures of Maine.
So on our last (half) day in Maine, Trish the Dish and I snuck in a couple of last-minute adventures. (A reader asked who is Trish the Dish? Patricia Dawn King of Moore, Oklahoma, lost her mind and married me 42 summers ago. She’s been my lighthouse ever since).
We took the Casco Bay Ferry to Peak’s Island for lunch, then we drove through the upscale Portland suburb of Falmouth, en route to the airport.
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How many people live on Peaks Island, Maine?
Between Portland and Portland Head, where the ocean meets the bay, sit 136 islands. Most uninhabited and most part of Portland’s city limits. But a few of the islands have either residents or summer tourists or both. And Peaks Island is the most populous of those 136 islands, with an estimated population of almost 1,000 year-round and anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 in the summer.
Peaks Island is about three miles off the Portland mainland and accessible via ferry. The Casco Bay Ferry runs 10-12 times a day, carrying cars, people and bikes. It’s quite crowded. The 12:15 trip over to the island included a wedding party, complete with groomsmen in tuxedos. The ferry left some cars and pedestrians behind, because the boat filled up, and one thing you never want to do is overload a boat.
The ride across the bay is 20something minutes, so by 12:45 p.m. we were on Peaks Island, which sports an elementary school, library, police station, ice cream parlor, grocery store, art galleries, two museums, a kayak rental and a golf-cart rental.
Long Island, another inhabited Casco Bay island, seceded from Portland in 1993, and in recent years, both Peaks Island and Great Diamond Island have tried the same, to no avail. I don’t know the politics involved, but I know Peaks Island, 720 acres, is a jewel.
When we landed, we walked straight to the Island Lobster Company, which sits on the bay and has two levels of outdoor seating, plus a grassy knoll of picnic tables near the water. For lunch, Trish the Dish had a lobster roll and I had fried scallops, since they are considered a Maine staple and I hadn’t tried them on our trip. The lobster roll was the best of the week – packed with luscious meat – and my scallops were good.
Island Lobster Company is an endearing enterprise, since there is no middle man. A family runs the operation from sea to table. The husband has a lobster boat; the wife runs the restaurant.
After lunch, we tried to explore Peaks Island via golf cart; alas, like we would discover with the airport rental cars later in the day, they were all sold out.
So we loitered around the Ferry dock, enjoying our final day on the sea.
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Taking the Casco Bay Ferry
The Ferry can handle about 10 cars at a time and hundreds of walkers. The boat was far less crowded returning, since it was the middle of the day.
The Portland waterfront is quite impressive, with all kinds of commercial shipping taking place, and overnight, the cruise ship Norwegian Pearl had docked.
Portland and its suburbs account for seven of Maine’s 10 most populous cities. Portland has about 68,000 residents; Lewiston, about 35 miles north of Portland, is Maine’s second-biggest city, with about 36,000 people. Bartlesville is slightly bigger.
After redocking, we popped into our rental car and drove a few miles north through Falmouth, which a tour guide had told us has replaced Cape Elizabeth as Maine’s most affluent municipality. Falmouth backs up to the bay, with dozens and dozens of houses aligning the shore. We drove Route 88, which for a few miles displays stately New England homes, not opulent but elegant.
Then it was off to Portland International Jetport. We arrived way early, 4 p.m., for a 6:55 p.m. flight, so we could watch our granddaughter’s Alcott Middle School softball game via the GameChanger app. Between innings, we dropped off the rental car and made it through security. About 4:45 p.m. came the text – our flight was cancelled. Weather in Chicago, which contained our connecting flight.
I knew what that meant. Saturday night? Small airport like Portland? We were in trouble. I immediately scurried down to the ticket counter, was third in line and got us rebooked. Portland had no flights until Monday – lots of people fly out of Maine on Sundays – but my New England geography paid off.
I got us booked on a Sunday evening flight out of Manchester, New Hampshire, 95 miles away. I made a quick itinerary. Get over to Manchester on Saturday night, find a hotel, and we could spend a good chunk of Sunday exploring New Hampshire, a state we adored on our New England trip two years ago.
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Trouble was, how to get to Manchester? I quickly learned the rental cars were all booked – it's summer in Maine – and a taxi wanted $300 for the trip. So I ordered an Uber.
I’ve asked Uber twice to take me relatively long distances. Once, with our man Joe Mussatto, from Grapevine, Texas, to Norman, trying to get home from the 2019 NCAA Tournament, when all the DFW flights and rental cars were booked solid. That trip cost us $180 and went smoothly.
Another time, I needed to get from Purcell to Ada, and I batted .500. My first Uber driver said she couldn’t go that far. Another Uber driver was happy to take me.
Uber’s strategy is to keep the destination from the driver until the customer is picked up. That motivates drivers to pick up all customers, instead of allowing them to decline trips to undesirable locales.
I understand that policy. But it doesn’t work when somebody wants to go from Portland, Maine, to Manchester, New Hampshire. Virtually the same distance from Oklahoma City to Tulsa. Not every driver can make that commitment.
We batted .500 again. The first Uber driver said he couldn’t do it; he had to pick up his kids soon. I get that. We’ve all got lives to live.
My second Uber driver didn’t want to go. He sat and thought long and hard. Then he gave us the come on. Turns out, the guy lives in Lewiston and had just brought a customer from Augusta, the state capital, 56 miles away.
He was a nice fellow. An African immigrant, five years in America seeking asylum, with a wife, three daughters and another on the way. I hope the trip was financially rewarding for him without too much of a hassle. The charge was $169, and he reaped $89 of that. I gave him a $50 tip. So he got $139. And he picked up a fare at the Manchester airport, after dropping us off. I hope the next customers were headed in the direction of Maine.
On the trip to New Hampshire, I booked a hotel and a rental car – what did we do before cell phones? -- and soon enough Trish the Dish and I were in a Kia Soul. We grabbed a small snack, found our Fairfield Inn and crashed.
Maine is behind us, but adventures remain.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. Support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Maine travel guide: Taking Casco Bay Ferry boat to Peaks Island
