Camden, Maine & Lobsters

Camden Harbor Inn

We splurged and stayed at the elegant Camden Inn on the hill, an old local style of architecture which had been bought recently by 2 Dutch guys who added their own style…we had appetizers of pemaquid mussels, and warm beet salad and gnocchi with local mushrooms, and the warm chocolate cake for dessert, all delicious.

I wanted the local black trumpets that a local guy had brought in. He found them in the woods in Lincolnville, which he sold to the hotel for $10/lb. It took a few hours to clean and cut them to make them proper for the hotel chef.

He was also a lobster man, grew up “on boats since before he could walk”.  He said he loves his life and the fact that he can do what he does and make a living. He said lobster season is from May thru Nov and when the water gets too cold the lobsters go deeper where the water stays warmer.

Camden Harbor Inn

Tom, the bartender had just moved back to Camden with his family, was a photographer also. During the day he and his wife have a studio shooting people portraits.

The Maitre’d was a wonderful older woman from Bern, Switzerland and had followed a man out to Camden from San Francisco but when she got there, he was already with another woman….! So she left for awhile but came back again, and luckily he was long gone. Such is life. But they say they all love it here…

Later on we met a couple sitting on the front porch of the inn, a wealthy couple from Texas with a house and Beneteau Sailboat in Coronado, San Diego…he tried to warn us to “stay in the harbor”, then I told him I’d paddled an outrigger canoe across to Catalina in 5 hrs and raced the Molokai Channel, and he didn’t say anything more….

See more photographs of Southwest, Maine

Tags: Beneteau Sailboats, Camden, lobster man, lobsters, Maine, outrigger canoe, Southwest