My memorable maiden voyage to Vinalhaven | Victoria Hugo-Vidal
Last weekend, to celebrate my wife’s birthday, our moms volunteered to split-shift babysit Sonny for the day so we wives could take a day trip, the first one we’ve been able to do since our son was born. We went to Vinalhaven. My wife had been once before (in the winter), but I’d never been.
The only way to get there is to catch the ferry from Rockland, and as my dad always said, the ferry waits for no one. We got to Rockland early enough to grab breakfast; we wanted to go to one of the cute lil cafes, but we ended up at the Dunkin’, which of course is where all the locals go.
While we were picking up our tickets, I managed to walk directly into the side mirror of a Maine DOT truck while its driver was standing on the other side eating a breakfast sandwich. I apologized profusely and then it turned out he was the guy who scanned my ticket on the ferry!
The ferry ride is a little over an hour but the accommodations are pretty sweet and there’s a bathroom (excuse me, a “head”) on board. Also, it’s very dog-friendly, and full of friendly dogs (shout-out to Shiloh and Nike). And if you’re a parent of a teenage boy who was part of a group on the ferry that day going to Vinalhaven to do some biking, your sons were amazingly well behaved. Please email me and tell me how you did it so I can make sure Sonny grows up like that.
We didn’t have much of a plan for our afternoon on Vinalhaven, other than board the ferry back on time and enjoy some blissful couple time doing something other than tag-teaming diaper changes. The weather was perfect: sunny, with a light breeze; warm enough for ice cream outside but not so warm that it made all the walking uncomfortable.
First stop off the boat was, of course, coffee (because I always need coffee), which we got at Blue’s, a bright blue food truck on the bright blue ocean, where we sipped and pet yet another friendly dog. Then we saw what we thought was a junk sale across the parking lot, but it turned out to be the Vinalhaven Swap Shop. Which is basically a thrift store except everything is free.
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The hearts popped out of my eyes, I swear. I love a good town swap shop; it’s probably the thing I miss most about living in Buxton (other than, of course, my beloved mother). I could have spent hours in the swap shop if left unsupervised but fortunately my wife kept us on a tight schedule of wandering around with no particular destination, so I grabbed a couple board books for Sonny and on we went.
We meandered out of town, looking at the gorgeous houses that clearly belong to summer people and the regular houses where full-time Mainers live, commenting on the cedar shakes (we need to replace some of ours, which means we now have opinions on everyone’s, I guess). Then we ended up at Lane’s Island Preserve, a 45-acre nature preserve with a couple of miles of fairly gentle hiking trails bordered by sea rose bushes.
Oh my God, if you ever get to visit, you should. It’s astoundingly gorgeous, the part of Maine they put on postcards, with dunes by the beach, pine trees tall against the horizon and views miles out to sea on a clear day. There were monarch butterflies and bumblebees all over, the big, fat, fluffy kind. Also, blackberry bushes by the trailside if, for example, you didn’t get a snack at Blue’s and were starting to feel kind of peckish. We didn’t swim, but I did take off my shoes and dip my feet in the ocean. (Don’t tell the Nature Conservancy, and watch out for the sand fleas.)
From there we went back into town and stopped at the Secondhand Prose bookshop to see if they had any of my mom’s books (they did!). I can’t just walk by a bookstore without looking, unless it’s an emergency situation. Then I dragged my wife into Vinalhaven Veggies, mostly because they had a sign on the door that says “VHV” and do you know how rare it is to see my initials in the wild like that?
Obviously I bought a tote bag (you know how we liberals love our tote bags). My wife got some locally made chorizo, which did not have her initials on it but was extremely tasty. Then we grabbed ice cream at Vinalhaven Candy Company and scuttled back to the ferry, where we heard a bunch of small children doing the “feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme” chant from the 1993 “Cool Runnings” movie, which to them is probably classic cinema.
For my wife, no day near the ocean is complete without a fried haddock sandwich, but we ran out of time to get one on the island so we ended up at a roadside food truck in Rockland called The Zack Shack. I didn’t actually see anyone named Zack there, but I assume he was in the back working the fryolator because the best fried fish in Maine really does come from a random parking lot operator. Can’t go wrong.
Meanwhile, Sonny was so hyped up from a day full of nothing but grandma adoration that getting him into bed took a full hour longer than usual, but that’s another column.
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