Kennebunkport

Lia spotted the pie first. We had just parked near Dock Square, both of us stiff from the drive up from Boston, and there in a bakery window sat a blueberry pie so blue it looked painted. We bought a slice to share on a bench by the Kennebunk River, and I remember the exact moment a lobster boat throttled down to idle past us, a gull riding its wake like it was being towed. Lia said, quietly, “I think I could live here,” which is what she says in every third town we visit, but this time I almost believed her.

The Harbor and Dock Square

Dock Square is the beating heart of the port, a tangle of clapboard shops and old brick where the two Kennebunks meet across a low bridge. We are not shoppers, Lia and I, but we drifted anyway, past a chandlery, a shop selling nothing but Christmas ornaments in July, a fishmonger stacking crushed ice. The real theatre is the river itself. Boats come and go on the tide, and if you stand on the bridge long enough a lobsterman will nod at you like you belong. We watched one unload his catch at a dock, banding claws with a practiced flick, and he told us the water was still cold enough that the meat would be sweet. He was right.

Ocean Avenue and Walker’s Point

The next morning we walked Ocean Avenue, which curls along the shore past shingled summer “cottages” the size of embassies. The Bushes’ compound sits out on Walker’s Point, a low granite headland with the family estate spread across it, and a small crowd always gathers at the roadside to look. But the houses were not what held us. It was the rock. The Maine coast here is broken grey stone, seamed and pocked, and the Atlantic throws itself against it in slow, heavy explosions of white. We climbed down to a ledge, and Lia stood with her arms out, letting the spray reach her, laughing at the cold of it. A little further on we found Spouting Rock and Blowing Cave, where the surf funnels up through the stone and exhales.

Goose Rocks and the Lobster

Everyone talks about the lobster, so let me be honest: our best one came from a paper tray. We drove out to Goose Rocks Beach, a long soft crescent of sand a few minutes from town, and picked up rolls from a nearby shack on the way. We ate them barefoot on the beach, buttered meat spilling out of the split bun, the sea flat and shining at low tide. A pair of kids dragged a net through a tide pool. Lia declared it the best lunch of the trip and I did not argue, because for once the reputation and the reality were the same thing. We stayed until the light went gold and our fingers smelled of butter and salt.

Getting There

Kennebunkport sits on Maine’s southern coast, about an hour and a half north of Boston and thirty minutes south of Portland, which makes it an easy day trip or, better, an overnight. Most people arrive by car; parking around Dock Square fills early in summer, so come before ten or use one of the seasonal trolleys that loop the town and beaches. The nearest train station is in Wells, a short taxi ride away, on the Amtrak Downeaster line. Whatever you do, time your walk along the shore to low tide, when the rock ledges open up and the sea has room to breathe.