6-30-06 (Wednesday): Well, 2 out of 3 is not too bad I guess. We enjoyed a little sunshine for ¾ of our first day off. It rained today and yesterday. We stayed home Monday and Wiley worked in the yard. I worked around the RV a little and also read and worked on the blanket I’m making for my new granddaughter. In the afternoon, we went and saw “Prairie Home Companion.” I loved it; Wiley thought it was boring. It’s about a small town live radio show that’s been bought by a big corporation and how the lives of all the performers are affected by that. If you like Garrison Keeler, you’ll love it. It was funny and deep at the same time.

Today we decided to go to Bangor (about 2 hours away). Our ultimate destination was the shopping mall there. In our usual fashion, we made some stops along the way. First we stopped at a little diner for breakfast. All the food was made from scratch and just excellent. We got to talking to the waiter about fishing and crabbing, and it was very interesting. He was telling us about some pink crabs that used to be considered trash, but that are now considered highly desirable. He called them “peekytoe crabs.” Wiley looked them up on the internet later. Here’s what we found:

Peekytoe Crabs of Maine
Until the 1990s, the peekytoe crab (aka Maine crabs, rock crabs, sand crabs, or mud crabs) was a discarded byproduct of New England lobster catches. A local slang term for the little crabs was picket or pick-ed toe, referring to the sharp point on the crabs' legs. This evolved into peekytoe about the time that Portland seafood wholesaler Rod Mitchell of the Browne Trading Company, realized their culinary potential and began selling them to upscale East Coast markets.

Now, the peekytoe is much in demand by discriminating chefs. Peekytoes are not marketed live or whole, but one of their attractions is the speed and care in which the sweet pink meat is handled and picked out. Pickers take the crabs straight from the boat to cook, shell, and send out to restaurants immediately.

Information on peekytoe crabs courtesy of www.chefs.com

The waiter also told us about an island just off Searsport called Sears Island. He said the fishing was good there. We were curious about an island you could drive to, so we turned off on Sears Island Road, and sure enough, it went right to the edge of the mainland and Sears Island was right in front of us. However, the bridge was closed to vehicles. So we pulled over to watch some guys digging for steamers (clams) and picked up some nice, flat rocks for our garden path that Wiley’s making. We plan to go back on a nicer day and walk over the bridge and explore the island. We also stopped in the Job Lots store in Searsport and got a really nice (name brand) golf shirt for Wiley.

As with so many of our planned adventures, the initial goal wound up being the least interesting part of the trip. The mall in Bangor was just a mall, and we didn’t even buy anything. Plus we didn’t get many pictures because I didn’t want to take the digital camera out in the rain. We did make a short stop on the way home to take a look at this neat spring. We would never have noticed it on the side of the road except that an old gent in a pickup truck was filling plastic jugs with water. It's a public spring right on the side of the road! The base is a bathtub sized block of solid granite with a shallow depression carved out (we think it might have been for watering horses). The cold spring water comes out of a pipe. There's a brass plaque on the front dedicating the spring to someone's father (dated 1869). Shortly after we saw this, we passed an old fashioned pump with a jug of priming water sitting beside it. It was also on the public road with a parking spot beside it.

Back to work tomorrow (and the weather is supposed to be gorgeous!).