Thursday, October 4, 2007

L.L.Bean and the "Desert of Maine"






One simply cannot go to Maine without visiting the merchant of Maine – Leon Leonwood Bean – who practically commands the entirety of the town of Freeport, Maine. The rest of the town clings on to Bean's coattails – there's a Lenox outlet, a Tommy Hilfiger outlet, a Brooks Brothers outlet, and on and on . . .

We ate lunch at the Azure Café' just two doors up the street (from L.L.Bean). After I took a picture of Clara in the outdoor café' setting, and she one of me, a gentleman from a nearby table came over and offered to take this one of us together, saying that he had seen what we were doing and that he and his wife had many pictures of one or the other, but few of them together . . .

Before leaving the Azure we inquired about the meaning and origin of the name "Azure," knowing already that it was a shade of blue, but curious since the subtitle was "An Italian Café'" and doubting that "Azure" had any connection to the Italian language. We were assured that it was indeed Italian, and probably Spanish as well; however, a later check with Etymology Online revealed that it was from Old French around the 1300's, as a corruption of an Arabic phrase describing "lapis lazuli," the stone with the blue color.

It's getting interesting to compare our morning plans with our afternoon outcomes – so far this week they have not even come close – not even once. But fate is sometimes fortuituous – our camping spot for the evening had an unexpected surprise – a spot of honest-to-God sandy desert right in the midst of all the trees and dense vegetation of Maine. So the story goes, a glacier cut through here some 20,000 or so years ago and left behind some glacial debris in the form of about a hundred acres of pure sand dunes – ain't that sumpin'?

As a final topper to it all, we find the most colorful tree we've seen to date, right on the edge of all that sand!

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