After leaving Portland we headed about three hours north to Bar Harbor, Maine to catch our ride on the Margret Todd in the early afternoon.  The ship is one of the largest wind powered vessels operating in New England.  Shortly after setting sail we had issues with one of the sails so we were down to three instead of the normal four.  The ship basically sails out into Frenchman Bay for an hour and then heads back into Bar Harbor.  There’s a morning cruise, afternoon cruise which we took and a sunset cruise as far as I can tell all of them were BYOB.  To me the coolest thing about the trip was seeing all the lobster boats out in the bay.

Thurston’s Lobster Pound

After our cruise we headed about an to the other side of Bar Harbor (about an hour car drive) to Thurston’s Lobster Pound.  Which unlike the other lobster shacks we visited had parking issues and about a 30 minute wait.  As usual though it was worth it.  Thurston’s is right on the water and unlike the other places we’ve been you paid by the pound not the lobster.  So each lobster was measured as you ordered and that was what you paid.  As you can see in the photograph above they use one giant steamer to cook all the seafood on the back of the porch.  Basically everything you order is thrown into a bag (lobster, corn, clams etc.) and each bag has a number that corresponds to your table. This way all your food is cooked together and is done at the same time.

Side Note:

* Originally we didn’t plan on going to Bar Harbor but on Thursday before we left town the New York Times had an article in the travel section titled ‘36 Hours in Bar Harbor, Me.’ so we decided to skip the second night in Portland and head a little farther north.  This of course made our drive the next day twice as far but it was worth hitting another town.  All four of our stops in Bar Harbor were from the article.

* On our way out of town we stopped at Cafe This Way for breakfast and Julie found a way to get Lobster in her eggs benedict.