George

Since “discovering” Ogunquit last year, we’ve been anxious to return to our “home” there — the Meadowmere Resort, a family-oriented inn with amazing amenities. In addition to the beautiful rooms and friendly staff, I like that we are able to park our vehicle there and walk to the beach, the oceanfront walkway and to downtown stores and restaurants.

On this trip, we picnicked at the beach, then walked along the wonderful oceanside paved Marginal Way, which was donated by a generous local builder in 1925. It’s a popular walk with a lot of nice benches.

Allyson Cavaretta, director of sales and marketing, manages the Meadowmere with her dad. Her grandfather built the original buildings in 1983, and her dad expanded the resort when Allyson was in college. “People thought we were nuts” she said, in response to their decision to remain open year-round.

Although the inn — with 24 family, luxury and honeymoon suites and 124 standard rooms — is one of the state’s largest, it doesn’t seem large. Each of the five buildings is rimmed with beautiful gardens, and the indoor and outdoor pools and jacuzzis are popular. There’s lots to do, including movies every afternoon and evening, and a health club/fitness center. Their buffet breakfasts are good and we lingered to enjoy the food and coffee.

Once you are a guest here, you’ll be impressed with the relationship you’ll have with Meadowmere. They even host six “Appreciation Weekends” each year, when regular guests are invited to visit at a discount. The money is donated to a charity chosen by the staff.

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I was impressed that 17 Ogunquit businesses, including Meadowmere, have qualified as environmental leaders by Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection. In fact, Meadowmere has won many environmental awards.

We also enjoyed a visit to the Ogunquit Museum of American Art (www.ogunquitmuseum.org), which featured an exhibit of the wonderful art of Dahlov Ipcar. You should get down there to see this before the exhibit ends on June 23. Their staff gave us a great tour, and I was particularly impressed with their permanent exhibit of World War 1 art. I loved the stunning art of James Linehan, focused on Schoodic Point — one of our favorite coastal destinations.

Outside we were captivated by Pamela Moulton’s beautiful interactive art event, an opportunity for folks to explore both constructive and destructive emotions. No surprise, Linda and I came up with “enjoyment” as our primary emotion. You can read more about this in the Travelin’ Maine(rs) section at www.georgesmithmaine.com.

Linda

Having visited Ogunquit last year, we prepared a picnic and left home early so that we could spend more time at the ocean. A few people at Ogunquit Beach were soaking up the sun, walking, or chasing after children who seemed to love running on the sand. The water was beautiful. A dark shade of blue met a lovely shade of green. The white waves crashing painted quite a picture.

Our luxury room at Meadowmere was spacious and looked out over the pool. With a king bed, desk and comfy chairs as well as a gas fireplace — we were quick to settle in. Having just walked the Marginal Way, George suggested a swim to cool off. We had the outdoor pool to ourselves, but I chose to just dip my feet in. An unheated pool means very cool water and only George was brave enough to jump in. I held out for the hot tub!

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The resort is large and sprawls over three acres. Two gardeners were busy all day, which explains why the grounds and perennial gardens are so well kept.

This is a family-owned resort. Allyson told us how she grew up here and remembers that her mom would load all three kids and beach gear into a Radio Flyer wagon and head to the beach for the day. Meadowmere now has red wagons available so families can create their own special memories.

We were lucky indeed to be able to visit the Ogunquit Museum of American Art on the day their first interactive artist of the summer came to for an exhibit. I so enjoyed our visit with Pamela Moulton (www.pamelamoulton.com). She had created a map of emotions from a variety of materials. Participants could roll a die that chose one of the five basic emotions, then connect it to a feeling by placing a personal memory there.

She told us that she was doing an installation at Laudholm Farm that had taken her 17 years to complete, and showed us a picture of her 14-foot sculpture created of tiny, white shells. She is truly a dedicated and talented artist.

Beautiful sculptures are on display at the museum, drawing the eye to the gardens and ocean. Rock pathways wind through the grounds and benches invite you to linger. And we did!

Visit George’s website — georgesmithmaine.com — for book reviews, outdoor news and all Travelin’ Maine(rs) columns, found listed by town in the “Best of Maine” section.


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