{"id":63574,"date":"2022-08-01T20:51:24","date_gmt":"2022-08-02T00:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.themainemag.com\/?p=63574"},"modified":"2022-08-02T10:57:54","modified_gmt":"2022-08-02T14:57:54","slug":"returning-to-round-pond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themainemag.com\/returning-to-round-pond\/","title":{"rendered":"Returning to Round Pond"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Returning to Round Pond<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following looping routes to and from Round Pond on the Pemaquid Peninsula, seafood spots and shops, coves, and villages come to life for summertime along Muscongus Bay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

by Sandy Lang
Photography by Peter Frank Edwards<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Issue: August 2022<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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It’s the 1980s in New Harbor. At least, that’s the vibe in the wooden-paneled dining room on a fishing wharf that has been operating as Shaw\u2019s Fish and Lobster since 1988. Perched over the narrow harbor, the classic waterside restaurant has just opened for the season. On a spring Friday the kitchen crew is cooking up lunch orders: lobster rolls, steamed lobsters and clams, platters of french fries, and plates stacked with fried and broiled seafood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through restaurant speakers somewhere in the rafters, music from a local radio station is playing\u2014mid-\u201980s songs by Guns n\u2019 Roses and Billy Idol. Outside, I check out views from a picnic table on the dining deck. A lobsterman is stacking traps on his fishing boat, and a ferry is moored nearby, ready to take tourists to Monhegan Island for a day trip. Afternoon sunlight is barely pushing through clouds, and there\u2019s too much fog to see out to Muscongus Bay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back inside, near the order counter and shelves of ocean curiosities that include huge lobster claw shells, I notice a framed Gourmet <\/em>magazine article from 1984 about the particular deliciousness of Maine lobster from New Harbor. A few steps away, at a separate small cocktail bar, Shaw\u2019s offers four or five beers on tap, including Pemaquid Ale, along with several varieties of island rum and other liquors. According to a faded sign, wine-soaked fruit sangria is a summer cocktail special.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interrupting the music, \u201cnumber 131\u201d has just been announced over the speakers. That\u2019s my order. From the counter I lift a tray arranged with a steaming bowl of fish chowder and a haddock Reuben sandwich topped with slaw, Swiss cheese, and Thousand Island dressing, plus a nice-sized wedge of blueberry pie with a flaky butter crust. Hello, summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A sunnier day a few miles away at Shaw’s Fish and Lobster in New Harbor.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Lure of Pemaquid<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re booked at the 1700s Chamberlain House in Round Pond, which, like New Harbor, is one of a handful of villages that compose the town of Bristol on the Pemaquid Peninsula, about 70 miles up the coast from Portland. I\u2019ve wanted to return since a memorable day at Muscongus Bay Lobster two summers ago, when photographer Peter Frank Edwards and I made the drive for Pemaquid oysters and grilled halibut served in steel skillets at a table on the wharf overlooking Round Pond Harbor. It was balmy summertime\u2014one of those long, sweet evenings\u2014and I remember watching the snug, round bay teeming with people on stand-up paddle boards and in dinghies, sailboats, and cruising yachts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Open seasonally for tours and still in use to help passing boats, Pemaquid Point Lighthouse was built in 1835 and flashes a light signal visible for 14 nautical miles.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Peter Frank says his attraction to Maine deepened when he photographed the nearby Pemaquid Point Lighthouse about 20 years ago with one of his film cameras. He\u2019s been wanting to get back to the iconic lighthouse, and I\u2019ve never seen it except in pictures. So, after our midday stop at Shaw\u2019s, we continue on down the peninsula beyond New Harbor until Route 32 ends a few miles farther down at Pemaquid Point Lighthouse Park, which marks the western entrance to Muscongus Bay. The fog is thicker here, mixing with the cool ocean air, and I pull on a jacket and hat before we park and explore. Beyond a few picnic tables under spruce trees, waves are splashing up in white plumes onto geologic layers of mudstone, sandstone, and granite. It\u2019s a dramatic land-meets-sea scape, with long stretches of linear stone formations lying horizontally below the white-painted lighthouse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I duck into the coziness of the keeper\u2019s house, where I soon meet Kendrick Wilson, who\u2019s answering guests\u2019 questions at the Fishermen\u2019s Museum housed there. Wilson\u2019s local knowledge is immediately impressive. A former fisher who served in the navy in the 1950s, he was born and raised in Round Pond and recalls childhood stays on Monhegan, ten miles out to sea. The island sits directly southwest of Pemaquid Point across open water, \u201cbut you can\u2019t see it today with the fog,\u201d he says. We ask about a huge halibut being hoisted by a man in an old photograph\u2014he knows all of the fishers by name. Wilson then encourages us to take a closer look at the beautiful and complex glass angles of a Fresnel lens that refracts and reflects a bulb\u2019s light so that the beam can be seen by passing boats at great distances. Standing here with the cool fog around us, it\u2019s amazing to consider that the Pemaquid Light, built in the early 1800s, is still in service as a beacon and navigational aid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Looking out over Round Pond on a summer\u2019s day.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Inside the Fishermen\u2019s Museum at Pemaquid Point Lighthouse Park.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At the Chamberlain<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

After some more exploring, we make our way up the peninsula to our Round Pond lodging at the Chamberlain House, a historic saltwater farm that once spanned about 150 acres on a wooded rise above the harbor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I notice the basket of eggs owner Shari Cunningham has collected\u2014mostly brown-hued, plus a few with beautiful pale green shells\u2014we begin talking about the fluffy-feathered hens she keeps. I learn that all the chickens in the hen yard near the rear patio gardens have names, and now I am trying to figure out which one is Louise. Hummingbirds are buzzing about in flashes of emerald green. Later, when I\u2019m looking out one of the windows in our second-floor room at its view of Round Pond Harbor, I notice the resident cat, Dory, slinking by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A stone-lined driveway in Round Pond leads to the Chamberlain House, a bed-and-breakfast lodging in a farmhouse that dates to the 1700s.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Shari Cunningham, proprietor, caring for some of the resident hens on the 12-acre property.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Built in the 1700s and owned by just five families since, the Chamberlain House is a recent project for Shari and her husband, Paul Cunningham, who grew up in Round Pound in a boatbuilding family. (His father, Bruce Cunningham, founded Padebco Boatyard in the 1960s.) In 2015 the couple began a full cleanup and renovation of the farmhouse. They reduced the number of bedrooms to five, added bathrooms to each, expanded the kitchen, and disassembled an old barn that was in disrepair\u2014salvaged pieces of barnwood have been now refashioned into shelves and tables and doors. The pressed tin ceilings in the downstairs dining rooms and parlors, each with a different design, are still in place and have been restored\u2014I keep looking up at them as I try sitting in the various rooms, each furnished in creamy whites and natural woods, sometimes with an aqua blue or another color pop, and all with fresh-cut flowers in vases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shari says their latest improvements have included timbering part of the property to improve the view down the hill to the harbor. At sunup, Peter Frank and I follow a pathway to a shorefront stretch that\u2019s part of the Chamberlain House property, and we sit in the sunshine to watch a sailboat slowly gliding along in the low-wind morning. The shoreline here wraps around the sheltered harbor in a circular curve, with lobster pounds and houses, docks and boats in almost every direction. We\u2019d sit longer to soak in the glinting light and views, but Shari mentioned she\u2019d have breakfast ready soon, and I don\u2019t want to miss the farm eggs and blueberry muffins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The main dining table is made from salvaged barnwood.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Dinner on the dock at nearby Muscongus Bay Lobster.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Nautical art and original pressed tin ceilings add to the charming decor.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Land and Sea Finds<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For the rest of the sunshine-filled day we follow routes around the peninsula. On Back Shore Road in Round Pond, we step into the two-story Art of Antiquing shop, freshly painted a handsome putty color with charcoal trim. Owner Margaret Brown is talking with customers about items found on winter buying trips in England and France\u2014including jewelry, vintage British biscuit jars, plush linen and wool pillows, classic beer garden tables, and nineteenth-century portrait paintings. Next door, the Round Pond Art Gallery and Shoppe, founded by Sheala and Tony Jackovich, is not open the days we are visiting, but the building itself could qualify as a mixed-media art piece, with hand-painted signage on faded pink walls and a Dutch-style windmill tower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We retrace our drive toward Pemaquid Point, and this time we turn to find Pemaquid Beach, a town park on a broad beach of deep white sand. Nearby is Fort William Henry, a restoration of a waterfront 1600s British fort. We stop at the Rachel Carson Salt Pond Preserve, protected by the Nature Conservancy, where, only steps away from the roadside parking, we amble around the very same New Harbor tidal pool where Carson, the famed marine biologist and conservationist, gathered some of the material for her 1955 bestseller The Edge of the Sea<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A boardwalk leads to soft sand at Pemaquid Beach Park in New Harbor.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The eclectically styled Round Pond Art Gallery and Shoppe.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Browsing the carved wooden whales and paintings of schooners at Skipjack Nautical Wares in Round Pond.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a bright, warm afternoon, and I\u2019m thinking of icy oysters. We\u2019re in luck: the Hub Farm Market and Oysteria in Bristol is serving at outdoor tables in a small yard bordered by woods, and we order Pemaquid oysters and littleneck clams on the half shell with glasses of ros\u00e9 for a late lunch. Sitting under an umbrella and sipping up the briny liquor in each shell, a song I heard the day before at Shaw\u2019s Fish and Lobster is now playing in my head. It\u2019s the 1980s hit \u201cDon\u2019t You (Forget about Me)\u201d by Simple Minds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not to worry, I tell Peter Frank as we recall moments of this Pemaquid Peninsula getaway. I won\u2019t forget these places. I\u2019m already planning our Round Pond returns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The writer looking out on the harbor at Round Pond.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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PENINSULAR DIP<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n

In the height of summer, it\u2019s possible to see several lobster pounds at once from vantage points along Round Pond Harbor\u2014and everyone gets on or near the water somehow. Below is a beginning list for visitors to the villages, coves, and roadside stops on the Pemaquid Peninsula this summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FOOD + DRINK<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Shaw\u2019s Fish + Lobster Wharf<\/strong>
Seafood, steaks, cocktails, and beer; indoor and outdoor waterfront seating.
129 Route 32, New Harbor <\/strong>
shaws-wharf.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Hub Farm Market + Oysteria <\/strong>
Pemaquid oysters and other fresh-caught seafood, house-made sauces and Bloody Mary mix, summer brunch in the woodland yard.
1005 Bristol Rd., Bristol <\/strong>
thehubfarmmarket.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Muscongus Bay Lobster<\/strong>
Dining on the wharf with seafood and ingredients from local fishers and farmers.
28 Landing Rd., Round Pond <\/strong>
mainefreshlobster.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lusty\u2019s Catch<\/strong>
Lobster, clams, and a full menu for takeout or served on outdoor tables on the wharf at Broad Cove Marine; BYOB.
374 Medomak Rd., Bremen <\/strong>
broadcovemarine.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A raw seafood platter to share with afternoon wine at Hub Farm Market & Oysteria in Bristol.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Hardy Boat Cruises offers ferry service to Monhegan Island as well as puffin and seal watching trips.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Chowder and a haddock Reuben sandwich at Shaw\u2019s Fish and Lobster.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Plastic drums at Shaw\u2019s Fish and Lobster Wharf in New Harbor.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

STAY<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Chamberlain House<\/strong>
Bed-and-breakfast in a renovated 1700s farmhouse with views and a footpath to Round Pond Harbor.
1313 Route 32, Round Pond <\/strong>
thechamberlainhouse.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pemaquid Point Campground
<\/strong>Wooded campsites with electricity and water for tents to RVs, just a mile to the Pemaquid Point Light.
2872 Bristol Rd., New Harbor <\/strong>
pemaquidpointcampground.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Art of Antiquing<\/strong>
Open seasonally with antiques and art curated from forays to England and France.
4 Back Shore Rd.,<\/strong> Round Pond <\/strong>
theartofantiquing.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Granite Hall Store<\/strong>
Candy, toys, gifts, and ice cream in a circa-1893 store that originally featured an upstairs dance hall.
9 Back Shore Rd., Round Pond <\/strong>
granitehallstore.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pemaquid Craft Co-op<\/strong>
Maine-made crafts and fine art by dozens of artisans.
2565 Bristol Rd., New Harbor <\/strong>
pemaquidcraftcoop.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Skipjack Nautical Wares<\/strong>
A wide collection of nautical items, from vintage diving gear to compass housings, maritime art, and sailboat hardware.
1172 Route 32, Round Pond <\/strong>
skipjackmarinegallery.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

SEE+DO<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Fishermen\u2019s Museum + Pemaquid Point Lighthouse Park
<\/strong>An iconic lighthouse with picnic areas, an art gallery, and the Fishermen\u2019s Museum at the end of Route 130 (Bristol Rd.), at Pemaquid Point.
thefishermensmuseum.org<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rachel Carson Salt Pond Preserve
<\/strong>Tide pools and hiking trails set aside by the Nature Conservancy in 1966.
Access along Route 32, New Harbor <\/strong>
nature.org\/en-us\/get-involved\/how-to-help\/ places-we-protect<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pemaquid Beach Park<\/strong>
Natural white-sand beach with parking, a dune walkover, and restrooms.
27 Pemaquid Beach Park, New Harbor <\/strong>
bristolmaine.org\/parks -recreation\/pemaquid-beach-park<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\t\t

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