What's in Dave's Head

Watching a baseball game at Boston’s venerable Fenway Park has been a bucket list of mine for years. So we decided to tack on a visit to Boston at the end of our recent Maine adventure. Boston is my kind of town. According to the unimpeachable reference, HelloFresh Ireland (I’m not making this up), Boston is the most Irish city in the world outside Ireland. One key factor is that Bean Town has more Irish pubs per capita than any other city outside the Emerald Isle. That’s good enough for me. We stayed at the Park Plaza hotel, just steps away from Boston Common, the Public Garden, many historic sites, and, propitiously, M.J. O’Connor’s, a handsome and authentic-feeling Irish pub. We arrived from Kennebunkport early Friday afternoon and after checking in, had a pint and a sandwich at O’Connor’s, then went on a  walkabout. In the beautiful Public Garden we found the bronze ducklings that are a tribute to the beloved children’s book, “Make Way for Ducklings”, by Robert McCloskey....

Maine beckoned and we followed. Donna and I recently visited for the first time the beautiful Pine Tree State to do some hiking in Acadia National Park and experience the quaint fishing villages that dot the famously rocky coastline. We coupled our Maine odyssey with a quick stop in historic Boston so we could catch a Red Sox game at the revered Fenway Park. ( Editor’s note: The author really means so  he  could go to Fenway, a bucket-list item; his wife was happy to tag along.)   Maine reminded us of one of our favorite places – the west coast of Ireland. Like Ireland, Maine is largely undeveloped (a whopping 90% of the state is forested) and is sparsely populated. The extensive coastline – longer than California’s – is buffeted by the same Northern Atlantic Ocean. As you would expect, fishing (and lobstering) has been a major part of the state’s economy for centuries, as in Ireland. Note: In Bar Harbor, we had a meal in Paddy's, which claims to be America's closest Ir...

Well, okay, not quite all of it. About six miles of it. Well, okay, not exactly six miles of it. Three miles out and back, so six miles total. But we did hike on it and it was awesome. The A.T., as we experienced hikers call it, is the 2,200-mile footpath that runs through 14 states from Springer Mountain in the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest in Georgia to the summit of Mount Katahdin in Maine’s Baxter State Park. Donna and I, taking advantage of perfect fall weather, made the one-hour drive to Washington Monument State Park near Boonsboro, Maryland on a recent morning. The park had three lures for us: interest in seeing the beautiful vistas from Washington Monument, a 40-foot stone tower erected by residents in 1827 to honor the first U.S. president; proximity to quaint Boonsboro, which we had visited before; and access to the A.T. The location of the tower, a half-mile or less from the parking lot, does indeed provide terrific views from atop South Mountain. Two histori...