A perfect day: Popham Beach and Spinney's

My daughter, just back from a month backpacking in Wyoming, said she missed the sea. On Sunday we drove a half an hour from our home to our favorite beach, Popham State Park. My daughter, her friend and my intrepid husband bodysurfed until their lips turned blue.

I swam in a wetsuit top and read The End of the Point. It's getting harder to save this beautiful novel for beach days only. Sometimes I think Elizabeth Graver is writing just to me: "Still, I want to think and talk about things that matter, to have conversations I return from changed."

At dinner time, we walked/waded two miles down the beach to Spinney's for good local seafood. My British husband ordered fish and chips, of course. I had my usual lobster roll and Vidalia onion rings (theirs are the best) with Lobster Ale (a red ale) on tap from Belfast, Maine. Despite living her entire life in Maine, our daughter doesn't like seafood. For a month of backpacking she had to live off dehydrated beans and cornmeal so she dug into a steak and cheese sub. Her friend had a shrimp roll, also locally fished. Ah, the taste of summer!

At Spinney's the service is slow and there is no air conditioning, but the view is well worth it. The building with the red roof is the Life Saving Station (1883). The lighthouse marks Pond Island offshore.

Later we pulled on fleeces to watch the moonrise from the beach. The heat wave has finally passed, and we are back to low 80's days and cool nights. Why go away for vacation if you live in Maine? Well, at least in summer...