THE WILDLY BEAUTIFUL PENINSULAS OF MIDCOAST MAINE INVITE AMBLING AND STOPPING … AND RETURNING AGAIN AND AGAIN.

by Annie Graves

PHOTOGRAPHS BY SARA GRAY

BY ANNIE GRAVES

idway down the western side of Harpswell Peninsula, the choppy blue water is spotted with two islands, John and Joe, named for a long-gone shipbuilder’s sons. “I’m not partial, but of all the peninsulas, this is the best,” declares Albert Allen, standing on his family-owned wharf at Lookout Point, where Allen’s Seafood sells fresh lobsters, crabs, and clams, with a side order of impossibly lovely island views, shimmering water, and a picturesque jumble of shacks, barns, bunkers, and traps.

We’re at the start of a five-peninsula-hopping expedition that begins just over a half-hour north of Portland, where a series of tentacles dangles down into Casco Bay. Harpswell, Phippsburg, Georgetown, Boothbay, Pemaquid: names that sound like fingers plucking strings, like wooden ships. We’ve left U.S. Route 1 at our backs, heading south to the fierce Atlantic on our first skinny peninsula. Maybe it’s the nature of peninsulas: Neither mainland nor island, separate yet connected, but already it feels as though we’re adrift in time.

The next days will be the perfect collusion of “ambling” crossed with the notion of “by chance.”

If it’s open and looks inviting, we’ll stop. If a road winds seaward, we’ll go down it.

To land’s end and back, over and over and over.