"Like The Ice Cream Parlor Days"...

Opps!

“If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.” ~Yogi Berra

Good morning Wednesday... and everybody that's doing Wednesday, today.
Third cup...

Last night, after dinner, I really wanted to spend more time with Therese. She's always so distracted with school "goings on" and I, now with my continuing storyboard saga. It's been pretty much this way since I returned home from St. Francisville. Tee actually started a batch of clothes in the middle of dinner.

Amongst other things, I am still messing with mom's "estate" such as it is. And every now and then, we run, unexpectedly, back into Brian's life, which sends us into an immediate funk. But, at this time, needing her attention, I said, "Let's go into town, after dinner, and get a ice cream cone and then, go to Magnolia Park, for a walk.

I reiterate Mr. Berra! "“If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.” 

When we arrive at the little diner that sells ice cream cones, it was closed.

"Who the hell closes their restaurant on a Tuesday?" I mumbled in frustration.

"Let's just go to the store and buy some ice cream," my wife said.

"No, that's not the point. I wanna spend some time with you, like the ice cream parlor days," I replied. 

"We can buy all the ice cream in the world and still sit at home eating it in our distractions!"

So, we thought and thought of where we could buy a simple ice cream on the Northshore. Not the swirly kind in one of those sugar cones, but real ice cream in those huge brown pointed kind of cones. 

We drove about ten more miles to a place where we thought there might be a some true ice cream, but it, " Ain't Dere No More!" to quote a popular post Katrina patois.

We continued for a few more miles looking for a legit ice cream parlor. In the process of our search, we got away from home to spend some quality time together. She opened up to talk about school, the kids, the pressures and other assorted topics like where are we headed and what are our goals for the future. We, also, had a few good laughs, too. 

We ended up at a place in Mandeville where I thought, for sure, there was a Baskin/Robbins, but "NOOOOOOOOO!"

"Ain't Dere No More!"

These are the times when I really miss living in New Orleans, a town that never sleeps. It took us almost an hour, but, we finally found a TCBY store and decided a frozen yogurt would have to suffice.

And it did. And, I got my wife's total attention, for awhile!

Thanks Yogi, you were so right!

Isleford Island and "View of the Bay"...

The local parking lot!

Flowers were plentiful on the island!

We decided to take the ferry to some islands to avoid the bad weather. It drizzled most of the time we were on Isleford Island. There really wasn't much to see on this island which is part of the "grand tour" of the Cranberry Islands. Therese and I walked and snapped photos for about a half mile up the road, which really led to nowhere. There were flowers everywhere, on the lawns and in empty lots and everywhere, landscaped like the church's front entrance or just wild. I surmised the spring and summer time being so short this far north, plants take the immediate opportunity of warmth and sun while they can. 

 A native riding uphill on a golf cart laughed quizically when we asked her what was here for a tourist to see. She mentioned three buildings that sat just a few hundred feet from the harbor that we thought we had already investigated thoroughly.

Apparently not!

From the landing dock, a view of the co-op dock
and to the left of it, the Isleford Dock restaurant.

One on one pier was a co-op fish market, the other pier housed an art gallery and a restaurant and the other building housed a museum, which had steps leading from the double doors onto an uncut lawn. At the museum, there was actually a ranger giving tours, but it was only Tee and me, so we got the elite tour. The museum was full of artifacts from the fishing village's past including whaling tools, model ships and displays. It was, especially since we got the royal tour, quite educational. 

We would, later the next day, meet that same ranger on the big island giving a nature walk along the craggy, southeast part of Acadia National Forest.

From the outside, the restaurant/ art gallery, appeared a derelict shack running the length of a pier which looked even worse than the building itself. But once you entered the restaurant, it was totally together with views that covered almost 270 degrees of the bay. The interior walls were whitewashed with a knotty pine roof and large beams that continued invitingly from the bar to the art gallery, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The artwork wasn't gonna win any great contests, but it was more competent than most tourist trap offerings.

The food was excellent and priced like the owners appreciated your travels from the big island to this humble abode. Since, Therese and I are not frequent lobster diners, I can't really say it was the best I've ever had, but it was certainly big enough and tasty enough for me to recommend it to any one we met on the big island. The rest of the meal, cornbread, clam chowder and a veggie was also great, but the homemade wild blueberry crumble with ice cream was really the topper. It seemed there were wild blueberries everywhere on the island.

The whole experience was welcoming especially since it was a rather wet, gloomy day with not much else to see.

Me after lobster, blueberry crumble, coffee and a sketch...

My sketch, complete with spilled coffee, though unfinished, reminded me of a gruff, old, hostess at a South Pasadena sports bar where we would always take our son for pizza. After asking our son if the team won or lost, he'd asked us if we preferred a table with "a view of the bay" which amounted to a large grassy medium that separated the four lanes of Huntington Drive as it headed west toward Alhambra.

This time, not only was the food great, but we actually had, a great view of the bay!

Copyright2012/Ben Bensen III