Fast forward to our last day in Southwest Harbor. We booked a two hour cruise with Quietside Cruises on the Elizabeth T, a 33-foot real Maine lobster boat. Parking at the dock was free. No one else had booked, but the boat owner told the captain and the guide, Tony and Ryan, “Take them out anyways and give them a good tour.”
We hauled a demo lobster trap that held two “keeper”-sized lobsters as Ryan’s case study in lobster fishing management. Tony navigated the boat three miles up through The Narrows into Somes Sound and then out the Eastern Way for a view of Bear Island Lighthouse, a seal colony in the water peeking over at us, small islands, and pleasure sails against a background of the rounded mountains of Mount Desert Island.
As we headed back in the late afternoon, the fog rolled in like it did most days. The four of us were silent. The boats sailing by were silent. The air was silent. The only sound was the lobster boat motor chugging us back to the quiet side.
That night my boyfriend and I walked to the Lazy Moose Bar and Grill. The beer was flowing, the crowds were loud, and the music was louder at the bar on our last night in town. Red, the bar’s owner, was smiling while he was slinging beers. “The police won’t be by tonight to tell us the neighbors are complaining about the noise,” he told us. “They’ll give us a break on our last night.”
Perhaps it’s fitting that the bar had to close. The loud Lazy Moose never fit in with shushed Southwest Harbor on the quiet side of Mount Desert Island.