What's in Dave's Head

After college, I lived in Washington State in the Pacific Northwest for a time and fell in love with the region’s natural beauty. Forests of towering evergreens that make you feel insignificant cover the landscape. The magnificent Cascade Range, with snow-clad volcanic peaks such as Mount Rainier (elevation 14,410 feet), Mount Baker (10,781) and Mount St. Helens, which famously erupted in 1980, surround you. And the beautiful Puget Sound, which envelops the San Juan Islands, lies within easy eyeshot. A ferry from the town of Anacortes winds through the islands, stopping at a half-dozen ports along the scenic way. All of it is breathtaking. I had not returned to the area since my six-month residency there 47 years ago, but I wanted to visit my brother who lives there and show Donna the drop-dead beauty of it all. We landed in Seattle-Takoma International Airport after a stressful flight, picked up our rental car, and crawled north in bumper-to-bumper traffic during the afternoon r...

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...