Looking for something to do? With the kids? With your spouse/partner? By yourself? Here’s my list.

Take a walk in Camden. Go up and down Main Street, checking out all the stores. There are at least half a dozen new ones. How about Zoots in its new location? Don’t miss Rob Jones’ amazing Wooden Alchemy in the old Key Bank space or Lori Costigan’s lavendar shop.

Wander through the Smiling Cow. Bring the kids (or not).

Stroll down Bay View. Be sure to go all the way to Uncle Willy’s, candy galore, upstairs and down, take the kids or not.

Have you been in the Camden Library lately? Go in the old main entrance and enjoy the original reading room complete with fire place and a view of the harbor. Sit a while. Take the stairs down to the lower level, stopping in, halfway down, at the History Center. Certain children (I was one) will love the miniature model of the Camden Harbor back in the day. I still do.

Explore the library grounds with the little grotto under the back stairs of the library, lost until several years ago when it was rediscovered during a renovation. Peek down the skylight on the hill to the library below. Walk around the Bok Ampitheatre and then down to the harbor where the ducks congregate. Climb up along the wall where the falls from the Megunticook River pour into the harbor.

Sit on a bench and watch the harbor. Take a trip on one of the tour boats if it’s in your budget.

Get a fish taco at Harbor Dogs.

Lunchtime? Scott’s at Reny’s plaza can’t be beat. Share a picnic table. Meet new people.

Interested in a pub crawl? Don and I do an octogenarian’s version: two drinks, a cone at Riverducks and home. The drinks? We’ve done the rooftop at the new hotel on Bay View, Cuzzy’s upstairs bar, Seadog, the Rhumb Line (though that’s gone). One adventurous afternoon we hit the old Oasis (now the Myrtle Street Tavern) in Rockland, sort of a walk down memory lane for a former Coastie, circa 1962.

Take a hike. Bald Rock from Lincolnville’s trailhead. Or Mt. Battie from Mountain Street’s trail. Or Beech Hill in Rockport up to Beechnut, the sod-roofed stone hut at the top. Or any of the Camden Hills State Park Trails or Coastal Mountains trails.

Lincolnville’s Fernalds Neck trail or North Cobbtown Road (pick up Corelyn Senn’s write-up of that road in the mailboxes between 4-5 Avenues and near the Drinkwater-Field cemetery).

Explore Lincolnville’s old cemeteries. Use the QR code and your phone to bring up each one’s history and burials. Follow the trail of Elenora French through town: her home two doors down from the Beach Schoolhouse, her grave in French cemetery, to Maiden’s Cliff where she fell to the Youngtown farm (now the Inn) where she was taken and died.

Take the kids to Ducktrap. Mine learned to swim in the stream’s channel. Walk upstream at low tide; go under the bridge and find the remnants of the dam that once powered the sawmill and grist mill.

Do you like to shop? Janis Kay’s Red Cottage in the Center is open Fridays through Sundays; If you remember Janis’ Camden shop, Surroundings, this smaller version is every bit as charming. The General Store has lots of gifts, as does Dot’s at the Beach (as well as delicious food). The Lincolnville Fine Art Gallery and Maine Artisans, also at the Beach, are on my list.

A visit to Windsor Chairmakers is fascinating. Walk through room after room of beautiful handmade furniture built by Mike Timchak and his team. This place is a treasure in the middle of our town, right in plain sight, but I wonder how many of us have ever stopped to admire their work.

Is dinner out in your budget? The Whales Tooth, under new management, is as busy as ever this summer with lots of outdoor seating and a new menu. The Pound seems to have solved the problem of finding waitstaff with a system of ordering and pre-paying at the counter. The food is delivered promptly to your table, indoors or out.

Over at Rick McLaughlin’s Lobster Shack there hardly seems to be a down time. Onion rings, fried seafood, and seaside tables – can’t be beat.

How about Rockland? Check out the North End; take the street next to Burger King down to the waterfront. Park and walk around. A part of Rockland I’d never seen.

Come into town and go down Tillson Avenue to the Coast Guard station. A walk up and down Main Street is always fun, with my favorite being the Harbor Square Gallery, four floors of paintings. sculpture, and jewlery ending with an unexpected rooftop sculpture garden.

The Farnsworth of course. Have you ever spent time in its library of art books and artists? Or taken a class there?

Or explore Belfast. My favorites include Fiddlehead Artisans (fabric and supplies for every imaginable handcraft); Helen’s Heavenly Yarns which moved from its downstairs tiny space in mid pandemic to a large, airy shop next to the Co-op; the Belfast Co-op which has continually reinvented itself. I’ve watched it grow from the pre-order food co-op of the 1970s (the Erewhon truck that came up from Cambridge, MA every month to deliver bulk peanut butter and 50 pound sacks of grain to us here in Lincolnville) to its first storefront in Trux Hulburt’s building on Main Street to the modern store it is today.

Belfast’s downtown still has essentials for sale. City Drawers will fit you with a bra that really fits. The Old Professor’s Bookshop, well, who doesn’t need a bookstore that actually fits its name: scholarly, scientific, a bit dim, esoteric even. It’s right across from Chase’s Daily, another idiosyncratic Belfast business. Vegetarian and delicious.

Colburn’s, “the Oldest Shoe Store in America”, actually fits you with shoes, and has a downstairs bargain basement. Next comes Home Supply, my all-time favorite hardware store, though I mean no disrespect to Rankins, which after all, is my local hardware store. Oh and by the way, no disrespect to Viking’s, my neighborhood hardware store. Or, for that matter, Western Auto, just up the road and which has saved us from domestic disaster more than once.

Basically, I love hardware stores.

Finally, have you done the Belfast Harbor Walk? The little portion I saw out the windows of Therapy Partners doing knee PT mainly seemed to be a dog walking heaven. Continue on towards downtown and the Harbor Walk gets really interesting. There’s the shrouded presidential yacht Sequoia restoration, then the public landing itself, and then the walk takes you right through Front Street Shipyard.

A 440-ton capacity lift literally picks up and moves enormous boats out of the water and onto a parking spot on dry land. Yesterday, our first walk this year through the shipyard, Don and I were amazed at the first boat we encountered, the sleek and shiny Cangarda. We looked her up on my iphone, learning she was vintage 1901, nearly the last of the steel-hulled steam yachts built in America. And there she was looming over us on the tarmac.

Keep walking through the shipyard and you come to the footbridge over the Passagassawaukeag River. Don went onto it to chat with the guys fishing there, while I sat on a bench for a while. On the way back we stopped at the Marshall Wharf beer garden (yes, there’s a beer garden in Belfast) and finally for a chat with Doug Hufnagel, better known as Coffeeman.

These are just a few of my favorite places. Make a list of yours, then get out and enjoy summer!

Blueberry Wing Ding

Lee Cronin sends this:

“This Year’s Blueberry Wing Ding will be held August 14 at the Lobster Pound Restaurant from 7:00 - 10:00 a.m. with seating inside and outside. Blueberry pancake breakfast, blueberry bake sale, white elephant tables and a raffle. Prizes for the raffle are gift certificates to McLaughlin's Lobster Shack, Dot's, The Stone Brick Oven, Red Cottage, General Store, Youngtown Inn, Whale's Tooth Pub, and Inn at Ocean's Edge. 

Help support the Lincolnville Improvement Association's scholarship and beautification of Lincolnville. For tickets, call Lee 236 0028.

Dave Barrows Committal

A service for Dave Barrows will be held at Fletcher Cemetery on High Street, Saturday August 14, at 3 p.m. with a reception to follow at the Community Building in the Center.