A few years back, I had my first experience as a solo traveler. After deciding to make a career switch, I was in need of a new adventure—and a new place in which to find some inspiration. Enter Midcoast Maine, the rocky stretch of coastline between Brunswick (the home of Bowdoin College) and the quaint towns of Rockland, Camden, Belfast, and Bucksport.
In September 1604, the French explorer Samuel de Champlain landed off the rugged southern shore of what would one day become the state of Maine. Upon observing the bare, rocky slopes that defined the landscape of one extraordinary island, Champlain named the isle Île des Monts Déserts—the Island of Bare Mountains.
Back in 2005, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn gave us a comedic gem in Wedding Crashers, a tale of two friends’ escapades as they conned their way through nuptial celebrations in and around Washington, D.C. Besides introducing us to Chazz Reinhold, the film offered a glimpse of Maryland’s Eastern Shore—a place where madras pants, nautical-themed wedding vows, and jerks named Sack Lodge were supposedly normal parts of life. Cue to the real Eastern Shore, a collection of beautiful towns, quiet peninsulas, and vast wildlife refuges on the eastern edge of the Chesapeake Bay.
Before his death in 1826, Thomas Jefferson—the former president, vice president, and secretary of state—wrote a simple epitaph, soon to be inscribed on his tombstone at Monticello. “Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.”
The Long Weekender 