Puffins

We went to Maine this year with two missions: (1) learn about (and eat) lobsters and (2) see some puffins. Maybe if we got a little greedy we'd add in see some humpback whales breaching and feeding (that's not too much to ask, is it?) and do a little sightseeing in Acadia National Park. But lobsters and puffins were for sure must sees (and eats). Couldn't go home without checking those boxes. No way!!

To take care of all our missions (and a greed list item), we booked three cruises in our three full days in state: a lobster tour out of Bailey Island close to Portland; a puffin cruise out of Milbridge; and a whale watch boat ride out of Bar Harbor where we were staying three of our four nights. We had an awesome plan. Just perfect.

But things did not go according to plan. We found ourselves on Sunday morning (the last full day we were in Maine) having not set foot on a single boat. Lobster tour? Cancelled due to the captain recovering from surgery. Puffin cruise? Cancelled due to fog. Whale watch boat? Cancelled due to winds. Maine was shaping up to be the 2020 of our 2021 vacations. Nothing was going our way. We did manage to reschedule the lobster tour but didn't whale watch at all and were left with precious few last minute options to find puffins.

So we pivoted. We moved (for a small fee) our noonish flight out of Bangor to a 5ish flight out of Portland and we told Avis we'd be bringing the car back to PWM instead of to BGR (for another small fee) so we could squeeze in a 10 a.m. puffin cruise out of Boothbay Harbor. A 6:15 a.m. departure out of Bar Harbor got us there with an hour to spare. And at 10 in the morning on the last Monday in June, with our flight home about seven hours away, our hopes of seeing puffins on this trip rested in the hands of a tour operator called Cap'n Fish. Here went nothing. And everything.

This was not the first time puffins have eluded us on vacation. We hoped for some in Iceland in 2013 without understanding at that time that there was no way we'd see a puffin in December on land. We also missed nesting puffins (after we understood puffins only come ashore to nest and they only nest in summer) by a few weeks at the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland two years or so ago. Third time we hoped was a charm. The start didn't look too good.

Our target that Monday morning was Eastern Egg Rock, a small island (or maybe rock in the ocean is a better term) about an hour's travel by Cap'n Fish boat from Boothbay Harbor. With 60 minutes travel each way and  a 2-1/2 hour total tour time, that would give us about 30 minutes or so at the Island itself to observe hundreds upon hundreds of puffins swimming, flying, nesting and eating. Or so we hoped.

Maybe a few words about puffins is useful at this point. 

Puffins are a true pelagic bird, which means they spend most of their time at sea alone looking for food. Yep, these milk-carton-sized birds that look like footballs with wings spend nine to ten months each year on the open ocean traveling and eating without setting foot on land. The other couple of months or so (providing they are old enough), they spend mating and nesting, which pretty much has to be done on land. Which is why we went to Eastern Egg Rock in late June this year.

There are four species of puffin in the world. We went to Maine in search of some Atlantic puffins and suffice it to say for the purposes of this blog post that the Atlantic puffin is the cute one; the horned puffin is close to the Atlantic on the attractiveness scale but the tufted puffin and rhinoceros auklet just pale in comparison. There are a total of about 10 million or so Atlantic puffins in the world today. About 90% of the age-eligible puffins who mate each year do so in various spots in Europe. Most of the remaining 10% end up in Canada somewhere. But a precious few spend their nesting time on a couple of islands off the Maine shore, which is the only spot in the United States where you can spot the Atlantic puffin.

And yes, we saw some, because there are pictures right below. But there's more worth writing and reading, I feel.

Our original puffin trip was scheduled out of Milbridge, Maine about an hour east of Bar Harbor. If we had taken that trip, we'd have been on board a pretty small boat with a captain and just six passengers total. It would have been pretty intimate, which appealed to me in a number of ways. Our trip with Cap'n Fish's was on a lot bigger boat with a lot more people, which does not necessarily mean it's a less desirable experience. In fact, in rougher seas, a larger boat performs a lot better than a smaller boat and if you know where to stand (hint: THE BOW!!!!) on the larger boat, you can get some great looks at whatever you are on the boat to see.

But our Cap'n Fish boat came with an ace in the hole: an Audubon naturalist who was there to narrate our entire experience. And she told us quite a few things that we didn't know. Say hi to Emmylou, although our connection with Emmylou was purely over the boat's sound system because there was no way we were leaving the bow to check out the pictures in her bird-spotting narrative on our trip out to Eastern Egg Rock. Although I'm sure we definitely missed some things.

The most important thing we learned on this boat trip about Eastern Egg Rock was that if we had made this trip 120 years ago, we would have been traveling to a completely puffin-less island because at that point man had completely wiped them out on that rock except for one nesting pair and it's tough to sustain a future population in the wild off just a single set of parents.

Turns out that man had been interfering with the puffin population on the island for quite a long time. Man's original interference with these puffins was through the practice of stealing eggs from the puffin nests for food. As invasive as that sounds, apparently when conducted on 300 or so nests, the egging (as it was called) of Eastern Egg Rock was actually sustainable. The eggs stolen, and I guess the distance involved, did not have an adverse effect on the bird population on the island.

The death knell for this particular puffin population was the "need" for feathers (or sometimes whole stuffed birds) to adorn hats in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Puffins on Eastern Egg Rock could survive a few stolen eggs. But wholesale killing of adult birds in the name of fashion was devastating. By 1901, there was a single pair of puffins left.

Seventy years later, there were still no nesting puffins on Eastern Egg Rock.

So in the 1970s, the Audubon Society launched Project Puffin in an effort to restore nesting pairs of puffins to the island. The theory here was that since man had played such a huge role in extinguishing the birds from the island, man also needed to play a huge role in restoring them. If there was one thing that 70 plus years of no nesting puffins proved, it was that nature wasn't going to just "right itself". Humans needed to be involved.

There was just one problem: puffins return to nest on the land where they were born. No hatching on Eastern Egg Rock, no adult puffins to return there because they broke through their shells elsewhere.

The solution? To put it simply...birdnapping. It was determined that pufflings (that's a baby puffin and yes, that's actually what they are called) would register their birthplace as Eastern Egg Rock if they were relocated there within the first couple of weeks of their lives. So that's just what naturalists did. Right after hatching, they swiped the pufflings from another location, brought them to Eastern Egg Rock, put them in artificial burrows (puffins nest underground) and hand fed them until they grew strong enough to leave. 

Then they waited for them to come back and nest. For five years. Because puffins don't mate until they are five. In those first years, the puffin chicks could be anywhere in the world. The world wouldn't know if the experiment worked for five years. In the meantime, they repeated the exercise four more times.

In the late 1970s, puffins hatched on Eastern Egg Rock began returning to nest. What they found there when they did was an artificial puffin colony, complete with puffin decoys (to make the returning puffins feel like it was OK to be there, I guess); mirrors (to multiple the decoy and actual puffins); and speakers projecting puffin sounds (which according to Emmylou sounds like a cross between a cow and chain saw). It worked. Today, Eastern Egg  Rock boasts about 300 nesting pairs.

By the time we got underway from Boothbay Harbor, we felt pretty optimistic about seeing puffins that day. When we parked our car, the employee who took our money made sure to tell us there was no guarantee that we would see puffins and then quickly told us he couldn't remember a trip ever NOT seeing puffins. Plus we noted the ticket booth had a disclaimer about the likelihood of not seeing whales on a whale watch but there was no such warning about not seeing puffins. Emmylou's narrative only made us more positive that we'd be successful. And sure enough, when we got close to the island, we saw dozens of puffins floating in rafts (yes, that's the term) together. Mission accomplished.

There is something completely satisfying about seeing the object of a single species quest that is indescribable in its fulfillment. I went to see bison in Yellowstone in 2011 and alligators in the Everglades in 2014 and the first encounter with each of those animals was joyous, only to be overcome with waves after waves of the same species that made the pilgrimage to those two places completely worth it. Puffins in Maine got me that same thrill, although admittedly, we could not stick around for hours and just watch the way I did with my first bison and alligator experiences.

These birds are like little dolls or porcelain versions of birds or something like that. They are absolutely completely so well put together and they look perfect when floating on the water in great numbers or standing up, usually all in a line, on the rocky shores.

But in the air, not so much. The description that I used above about footballs with wings (I copied that from multiple sources; not taking credit for that one) is so accurate. They are awkward flyers who beat their wings up to 400 times per minute and look like they need to do that to stay aloft. I can't imagine how much energy these little birds expend in their nine or ten months out on the open ocean. We watched albatrosses (another pelagic bird species) down in New Zealand glide effortlessly over the open seas; puffins seemed like the antithesis of the albatrosses we saw and completely ill-suited to months away from land.

Admittedly, puffins use their wings not just to stay airborne but also to swim. They can dive up to 200 feet below the surface of the water using their stubby wings to power their compact bodies deeper into the seas than many other species of birds. It's still difficult to imagine them out to sea for months at a time.

If it seems like we got some great looks at puffins by the pictures posted here, I agree, I think we did. Truth be told our in person viewings of the puffins were actually better and worse than the pictures posted here. And yes, we took all of them ourselves. 

We got some amazing looks at puffins on the water and in the air. More, by far, than I ever imagined we would. These things were literally everywhere. But it is extremely difficult to take good, fully focused pictures of puffins in action (meaning landing on or taking off from water or in flight) while on a boat on seas with some pretty good swells. There are many, many almost awesome pictures where the subjects were thrown to the bottom or top of the camera viewfinder by the roll of the ocean. The picture below is the most frustrating near miss. The puffins at the top of the image, victims to a dip in the ocean that cause me and the camera to drop unexpectedly, would have made an awesome picture if they were center frame.

By contrast, we were hard-pressed to see puffins with any sort of detail while they were on the land. There were some standing on a series of rocks that were visible to the naked eye pretty well on our last pass around the island but other than that, it required binoculars (which we didn't bring) or the camera with the zoom all the way out which we used to great effect in the pictures department albeit with the same limitations that being on the open ocean in four foot (or whatever they were) high swells brought. I actually had thoughts prior to setting out that I'd be able to get super detailed pictures puffins with fish dangling from their mouths. Yeah...no.

In real time, our looks through the camera were fleeting and we were unable to focus in any sort of detail on the on-shore subjects before the sea yanked the camera lens away from our viewing point. There are a lot of blurry or unfocused images of rocks and sky that show absolutely nothing. On the other hand, the furious snapping of the camera got us some pretty decent looks at what we had difficulty seeing really well with the naked eye.

The downloading of the pictures from the camera after the cruise itself gave us a chance to re-live the experience itself as we looked at what we had actually taken pictures of. I especially love the picture below because we got a puffin in mid-landing. They really are like little compact bombs ill-equipped to fly for any sort of duration when you see them like that. This is my favorite picture of the day, despite the hazy background.

We've been on our fair share of nature themed trips or parts of trips over the last eight years or so and I've been on others, just maybe not as frequently, before my 45th birthday that kicked off this blog. It is always an endeavor that might on any day bring zero results. If I needed any reminder of that fact this year, I only have to remember our cancelled whale watch trip. We didn't stand a chance of seeing humpback whales this year because we never made it out anywhere near far enough into the ocean.

We got super unlucky with the weather on this trip. The fog and the wind looked like it would cancel any chance we would have to see these funny birds we'd been chasing for a little more than seven years. But we sometimes we manage to make our own luck. I don't like paying for moving flights and returning rental cars to different locations, but the money we spent doing that was definitely worth it. It got us probably THE signature experience of this trip and definitely cost us way less money and time than it would have to come back to Maine. 

Not that I'm ruling out a return trip to Maine, but we can easily add a whale watch to a number of locations I'd like to visit. We just can't do that for puffins. We had to make this work. I'm so thrilled that we did. Definitely worth the later flight home. Box checked. And in such an amazing way.

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How We Did It

What can I say about Cap'n Fish's Cruises, other than they saved our trip to Maine big time? These guys are seriously awesome, the boat is great and they don't seem overly booked up in sort of out of the way Boothbay Harbor. Things completely worked out for us with this company so I can't recommend them enough. The Audubon naturalist on board is a huge plus too. Their puffin cruise leaves from Boothbay Harbor daily at 10 a.m. The boat will circle Easter Egg Rock and give both sides of the boat an equally good chance of seeing puffins. Stand on or near the bow and you can probably switch sides each time the boat turns around and double your chances of great puffin sightings.

Parking at Cap'n Fish's parking lot was expensive: $30!!! After all the frustration we had with cancelled boat trips in our long weekend in Maine, we happily paid it to be super close to the dock. It appeared to us driving into town that there were probably other, cheaper options within walking distance of the boat. 

One of the places we had on our itinerary was the Audubon Project Puffin Visitor Center in Rockland, Maine. It seemed like the perfect companion stop to our Cap'n Fish cruise. Unfortunately, they were closed during our time in Maine. But it sounds like they would be worth checking out. 

Finally, when you are in Boothbay Harbor, I'd recommend lunch immediately following your puffin cruise at the Blue Moon Cafe. Their website says they have the "best view in town" and I couldn't agree more. Their deck overlooks the harbor which is just picture perfect gorgeous. Sit outside and head there right after the cruise docks. We did that and watched a bunch of other people pile into the restaurant after we'd ordered and we'd already snagged a prime spot on the deck.

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Bridge / No Bridge

There is a street in Bar Harbor, Maine named Bridge Street. The name is appropriate because at the north end of the street there is a bridge to Bar Island, a former dairy farm which is now part of Acadia National Park. Bar Island sits maybe a quarter to a half a mile off shore from the town of Bar Harbor and it is a popular hiking destination with a manageable amount of trails. 

If you want to take a trip over to Bar Island, you can get there by boat or by driving or walking over the bridge. However, there's a bit of a catch on the driving or walking part of getting there. For most of the day, the bridge isn't there. That means most of the time the only way you can get to Bar Island is by boat. Or I guess you could swim. If you are a pretty strong swimmer, I'd imagine. 

Our first visit to the north end of Bridge Street was on a Saturday afternoon just after lunch. We were not surprised to find no bridge when we drove our car down what effectively was a dead end street at that time. We knew we'd have to come back later. The fact that there was no bridge in sight didn't faze us in the least. It would be there later. And we'd cross when it was there. No big deal.

Bar Harbor gets its name not from the many bars in town but from the sand bar that defines the western edge of the town's harbor. You wouldn't know that from visiting the town on most hours of most days because the sand bar isn't usually visible, except at low tide. To get a good look at it, you'll have to travel to about the end of Bridge Street, which explains why we were not surprised when we drove down Bridge Street on that Saturday afternoon and found only ocean at the end of the road. The bridge is only there at low tide.

High tide = no bridge.

Low tide = bridge.

We didn't do a lot of hiking at Acadia National Park. The focus of our Maine trip was getting out on the water, not walking around on the land. But knowing there was a hike out there that we could only do when the tide was low and that we could walk to an island without walking over something man-made like an elevated bridge...well, we HAD to do this. 

Hiking sometimes comes with risk. Most of the time, that risk is that you might fall or get dehydrated or tired or get bitten by a mosquito or run into a bear or moose or something. The risk of hiking to Bar Island is that you might get stranded. The low tide - bridge thing? Only stays there for so long. After that it's gone and if you are too late, the next bridge is coming around about nine or so hours later. Don't be late getting off Bar Island!

Fortunately, the availability of the bridge is well known. According the Acadia National Park website the bridge is walkable for an hour and a half either side of low tide. That would theoretically give us three hours to walk there and back over a distance (assuming we didn't hike on the actual island) of maybe a mile total. Should be pretty easy to do, right? Right! So we got out our tide charts (otherwise known as looking it up on the internet) and found out that low tide on the Saturday we were in town was at 6:48 p.m. Let's do it!

Just to be sure we were there on time, we actually arrived at the end of Bridge Street a little more than two hours before low tide and found the bridge intact all the way from Bar Harbor to Bar Island. So much for the 90 minutes each side. Either that or I read the tide chart wrong. We didn't double check but there is a tide chart right as you arrive on Bar Island.

Given the apparent abundance of time we had before the tide came back in, we decided to take a little walk into the woods. And in case you are wondering if this is a story about us thinking we had way more time than we actually had and getting stranded for nine hours, it's not. Our hike was actually a nervous hike. Were we leaving enough time to get back to the mainland was a constant back of the head worry. We elected to not walk all the way to the summit but instead turned back so we'd have plenty of time to not get stranded.

We are not the most adventurous of hikers. Sometimes I feel guilty about that. We pick our spots when we hike. We hiked all day to Machu Picchu two years ago so we are up for it when we need to be up for it. The point of hiking to Bar Island was to walk over a piece of land that is not always there. We accomplished our mission that day. And more.

Sign on the Bar Harbor side...you have been warned.

The tide charts on the Bar Island side.

Turning back early was one of the best decisions we made. Not because we stood any danger of getting stranded. We made it there and back to Bar Harbor before the tide was even at its lowest point. Turning back early was a great decision because when we got back to the bridge, we realized we had tons of time and we slowed our walk back down. Way down.

There's a lot of value in slowing down. We probably don't do it as much as we could or maybe even should. There's a flip side of what we do and that's we pack a lot of experiences in the places we go. But that Saturday night we walked slowly, looking at what was below our feet and checking out, in as much depth as we wanted, the temporary tide pools that the ocean had left behind as it withdrew from land and out to see.

I had so many visions of amazing finds on this walk we never really intended to take. Anemones maybe. Brightly colored tentacles bringing dashes of color to a brownish sea bottom now exposed. Or starfish and little fish left behind stranded for a few hours before the ocean could allow a reunion with his or her fish friends. Crabs too. Maybe even multiple species.

There was none of that. We did find a couple of small crabs and a lot of mussels and barnacles clinging to rocks. But nothing like I briefly imagined. Maybe the herring gulls got to them all first because there were certainly plenty of those around. So we contented ourselves with shell collecting. And even then that was just taking pictures and leaving in place the actual shells or peekytoe crab bodies that were probably eaten by the very gulls we saw that night. And that was all cool. After all, we didn't even expect any of this.

In years past, by the way, I would likely have written "seagulls" rather than "herring gulls" in the paragraph above. But we took a boat ride on this trip where the naturalist pointed out to us there is no such species as a sea gull. My Maine resolution is never to use that term again.

Looking back across the tide pools to Bar Harbor.

An almost perfect razor clam shell.

One of the actual live and very small crabs we found.

It took us 15 minutes to walk from Bar Harbor to Bar Island. We took a quick walk in the woods and then walked back across the bridge. That return trip just from beach to beach took us 45 minutes. Three times as long.

Sometimes some of the most enjoyable times on vacation are those that come with no expectations. If you don't expect anything other than a walk there and back again across a normally hidden ocean floor, you are bound to be excited when it becomes anything more than that. We were here. Just slowing down and being with each other taking a walk and looking into pools was a great way to spend about a couple of hours in Maine. There was enough time to do it right and there was enough space to be away from anyone else you didn't want to be near. And considering the number of people we walked with, around and past elsewhere in Acadia, we were glad of that last part.

It still seems a little crazy to me that we walk across a piece of land that's normally covered by water. I can't think of anywhere else I've been where we did something quite like this. The tide in the harbor north of Bar Harbor can affect the ocean levels by as much as 14 feet. That's an insane amount but I'm glad that's the way it works. It got us an experience to remember before we headed off for the next lobster roll. And yes, we did go straight for lobster rolls after we got back to town.

Bar Island as seen from near the top of Cadillac Mountain. It's the long island just left of center.

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How We Did It

There's not a lot that's very complicated about this one. While Bar Island is technically part of Acadia National Park, there's no park ranger or any other sort of staff charging admission or checking tickets for you to walk over to Bar Island. Just check the tide charts and allow 90 minutes before and after the low tide mark, although you may find out that you have more time than that. I can't remember the website we used to check the low tide time but just Google "tide chart bar harbor" and you should find what you are looking for.

If you want to see Bar Island like we saw in the last picture of this post, you'll have to head to the top of Cadillac Mountain and you will need to pay to get into the Park and will very definitely need to have a special timed ticket to drive to the top of Cadillac Mountain. We did but as we were waiting in line to start our drive to the summit, we saw drivers in car after car after car plead with the park ranger to let them through and then pull a U-turn back the other way. Plan ahead, folks! The Acadia National Park page that describe the Cadillac Mountain summit access procedure is here. 

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Lobsters (Lobstahs)

Yeah, I know...my hair is messy, I look way too happy to be holding a shackled live lobster and the light hitting my sunglasses making one eye visible makes me look like some kind of cyborg. Whatever...let's talk about Maine.

Last year during the heart of the summer of COVID, we visited Vermont for a few days. I couldn't believe it. Maybe the pandemic got me a pass on this sort of stuff but I couldn't believe I had actually elected to visit any state in New England for a vacation after having grown up in Connecticut. What's the problem with that? Well, I guess growing up in central Connecticut I developed a distaste for most things New England-related. Something about the Revolutionary War history (I'm English) and Boston sports teams (I picked the New York Jets when landing in the USA), I'm thinking.

We weren't supposed to go to Vermont last year. It was a substitute for a Maine trip that was scuttled when the State of Maine decided to require quarantining after arrival for absolutely everyone traveling there. We weren't supposed to go to Maine last year, either. That trip was invented as a substitute for Costa Rica, which we were shut out of last year just due to plain common sense. There's no logical tie from Costa Rica to Maine, by the way; absolutely none. 

But that Maine seed grew over the last year. Maybe we felt we were denied something or maybe we were actually excited by the possibility of visiting. I reluctantly admit that I was super excited to head to Maine in late June, although even in my anti-New England mode I'd surely claim I'd be excited to go anywhere after learning up close about segregation in the South. Hello, Maine!

So what was up in Maine? Well, honestly, lobster was up in Maine.

Lobster boats anchored in Bar Harbor, Maine.

I have for a long time maintained that I don't get why people love lobster. Just don't understand it. It's expensive as all get out and when it comes down to it, I'd rather eat crab, which is also expensive but which is generally way less expensive and way tastier than lobster. I figured Maine was the place to try lobster at its best and either decide that I (a) truly didn't get what the big deal is about lobster or (b) really do like lobster after all, but only in Maine. Bring on the lobster rolls!!!!

But not yet. Let's get on a lobster boat first.

A trip on a real, genuine lobster boat was a must-do experience for me in Maine. No way was I going to spend hours gobbling down lobster rolls if I didn't get out on the ocean and get a little better understanding of how these creatures are caught and brought back to shore for hungry tourists like me. This was super important. Time for an almost-sunset tour from Bar Harbor around the lobster buoy dotted Frenchman's Bay.

We didn't have a whole lot of luck with boat rides on the seas off of Maine. Or at least we didn't start out with much luck anyway. Our plan was to take a trip on a small, working lobster boat between Portland and Bar Harbor but a cancellation of that trip with very little notice forced us to improvise and pick whatever was available. We ended up on the Lulu Lobster Boat Ride out of Bar Harbor and, lest you think I'm poo-pooing that experience, it was pretty awesome. We got most everything we could have hoped for out of a trip like this.

The big attraction for me on this trip was seeing the pulling of the traps up from the bottom of the ocean floor and then the rebaiting with rotting herring guts (attractive, I know, but that's what lobstermen use). Each lobsterman has a uniquely designed buoy which is also displayed atop the vessel. The Lulu (despite its lack of commercial fishing license) was no exception to this rule. Their green and purple (or at least that's how it looked through the lenses of my sunglasses) buoy is mounted on top of the roof of their boat.

We pulled three traps on our evening trip and we did catch some lobsters, one of whom had a damaged claw that our tour guide yanked off the lobster and tossed into the sea. She claimed they feel no pain when she did it and that the lobster likely had already started the process of shedding it so he or she could grow another (yes, they regenerate limbs; how cool is that?) but it was still a little jarring to see a claw yanked off and tossed overboard. And by "we" pulled some traps, I don't mean me. I had very little to do here except sit.

The emptying and rebaiting of the traps didn't take long, particularly because our captain, Dallas, used a motorized wheel to raise the traps from the depths and there wasn't a whole lot in the traps themselves. A Maine lobsterman leaves the traps down in the ocean for up to a week. I'm guessing the Lulu pulls theirs at least once a day on one of their four daily tours, including Sunday between Memorial Day and Labor Day when commercial fishermen are forbidden to fish.

So once you get the lobsters on board, the question is...can you keep them? Notwithstanding it was a Sunday when we were out on the water, we went through the motions anyway. If the lobsters you raise from the depth are egg carrying females (ours were not, but the eggs are on the underside of the abdomen), then you have to throw it back after cutting a notch in the tail. The notch takes five years to grow back fully and until it is, no lobsterman may keep that lobster. It's the ultimate get out of jail free card.

If the lobster is egg-free, then the only criteria for keeping is size. If they are too small, they go back. On board every lobster boat is a lobster measuring device that shows the minimum length of the lobster's carapace that makes the lobster a keeper. The carapace is the piece of the shell which can be loosely identified as the head of the lobster. The tool measures the distance from just in front of the lobster's eye to the joint on the back of the front-most shell segment. Ours were all too small (but only just) so they all went back.

Aboard the Lulu. Trap up, emptied and rebaited.

Too small. Only just but too small is too small. Throw it back!

If you think my experience on the Lulu had me getting any romantic notions of becoming a lobsterman, you'd be dead wrong. Ignoring the whole age thing for a minute...rotting fish guts, rough seas, nipping pincers, measuring each and every lobster for size and facing fines for non-compliance, a trap pulling and baiting timing that far exceeded the leisurely pace of the Lulu (about one a minute on a commercial lobster boat; a full load of lobsters on a boat is about 800 pounds!!!). No thanks. Not to mention the work hours which typically range from a half hour before sunrise to about noon. I like the early quitting time but sunrise in late June is close to 4:30 in the morning. I'm an early bird but that's kind of extreme.

Even if I had a notion of packing it up as an architect and buying a lobster boat, there are some other obstacles. To get a commercial lobster fishing license in Maine you need to be a Maine resident (could probably swing that one), have a high school diploma or equivalent (check!) and serve as a sternman on a lobster boat doing whatever nasty tasks the captain made you do for a minimum of 1,000 hours (yeah...not doing that). Then there's the whole 10 to 15 year wait list for a commercial lobster license. I'd be retired before I even started.

Despite all those requirements (or maybe because of them), there is a potential pending crisis in Maine. The average age of a Maine lobsterman is 62 years old. There is a genuine need to get younger people into the profession, which is why you can skip the wait list if you are a minor in Maine and secure your own fishing license pending satisfactory completion of the diploma and experience requirements. Too bad I'm not 18 or younger. Well...not really. I'd rather just start sampling some lobster.

Bring on the rolls!!!!

For a five day trip to Maine, I feel we ate a good amount of lobster. We ate six non-breakfast meals in Maine and four of mine were lobster rolls. I had lobster rolls in Bar Harbor and Bernard and Sullivan and Wiscasset. I paid as little as $12 and as much as $29.95 (admittedly fries were included for that price). I got instant gratification with little wait for some rolls and stood in line waiting for about three hours (NOT a typo) for one of my rolls. I did research in advance by checking Eater.com and other lists on the internet and I just winged it and ordered one at one restaurant with no known in advance pedigree. I have to say after all that, I can say that I do like lobster rolls in Maine.

Before we get to what I considered to be the best lobster roll I had in Maine, let me address Red's Eats in Wiscasset just for a couple of paragraphs. Red's is, by most lists and accounts and experts in lobster eating, pretty much the number one lobster shack in Maine. It's famous the whole country over. The Food Network has been there. Andrew Zimmern has been there. Various other sorts of celebrities have been there. It's a legend. It's a little shack on a corner of two streets in downtown Wiscasset, Maine with a deck out back where there are a few tables for you to savor that lobster meat (or whatever else you decide to order) after you order if there's space available. When our original lobster boat tour was cancelled, we decided we could make our way over to Red's for some lunch instead. 

We got to Red's and got in line at about 10 minutes before 1 p.m. on a Friday. The line was around the block, but all things considered there weren't that many people in line. I'd waited in longer lines for food and been really pleased. Franklin Barbecue in Austin and Pink's Hot Dogs in Los Angeles come to mind here.

Waiting in line at Red's Eats.

A little more than two hours after we started standing in line, we got to the counter. From there, it took us an additional 35 minutes to have our food brought to us, walk to a picnic table near the water (we were denied seating on the deck; they said there were no tables available but there were - just maybe no two person tables), unwrap our food and start eating. Two hours and 40 minutes from standing in line to eating. That's a long time.

The lobster at Red's is good and there's a lot of it. There's no question you get your money's worth in lobster for the $28.95 you shell out for a lobster roll. It's served plain with a side of melted Maine butter which makes the lobster taste better. But what doesn't taste better when dunked in melted butter?

I say the time in line waiting for this lobster roll is not worth it. By the time I got my food, I was legitimately hangry. I'd had about enough waiting when I got to the counter to order. We waited a little more to order when we got to the counter because the process of assembling lobster rolls (from the tub of already cooked lobster) seems to be the job of the person who is also taking orders. There are a number of twenty-somethings and teens working at Red's but none of them seem involved in the process of taking and fulfilling orders. If they streamlined their work process, I believe our wait in line could have been cut in half or better. It's about the most inefficient kitchen I've seen in recent memory. No way do people need to wait more than 2-1/2 hours for food considering the length of the line we joined that Friday afternoon. Rant over.

Thurston's in Bernard. These guys are cooking lobsters to order and turning out food faster than Red's.

Maybe the wait at Red's affected the enjoyment of my food but I did not think that I got my best lobster roll of the trip in Wiscasset. That honor for me belonged to the Side Street Cafe in Bar Harbor. It was the only roll I had that was not on some list I found online and I thought it was the best bit of lobster I put in my mouth in our five days in Maine.

Side Street's lobster roll was the most expensive we ate, although legitimately that price included fries. It was sensibly sized with a great bread-to-meat ratio while also not skimping on the lobster. It was dressed in a tiny bit of mayonnaise with some Old Bay seasoning and a lemon slice on the side. It was juicy and tasted like lobster (or as I put it at the time...not like shrimp). In my montage of lobster roll eating photographs above, it is the last lobster roll next to the Shipyard glass. I would go back here for that meal any time, even at the price point. Lobster ain't cheap, but that roll was amazing. 

And that's all I really have to say on this subject. Post pretty much over. Go to Side Street Cafe if you are in Bar Harbor. And if you are in Southwest Harbor, Thurston's is pretty darned good too and with some way better atmosphere and scenery than any other place we ate lobster.

We didn't do everything we set out to do in Maine. We missed out on whale watching due to the weather and we scratched a moose watching trip off our list because we'd seen a ton of moose last year and if we wanted to see a moose with huge antlers (because moose without antlers are just not worth it), we'd be going at a time with no puffins around (and we HAD to see puffins). But we got our lobster experience in full force. If I ever go back to Maine, I know I'll be having some lobster rolls. Maybe not at the same places, but if this trip proved one thing to me, it's that I do actually like lobster. Mission. Accomplished.

Piers and lobster traps near Thurston's Lobster Pound.

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How We Did It

I spent all told about 96 hours in Maine over five days and had four lobster rolls. The places listed below are in order of my personal preference.

Side Street Cafe in Bar Harbor served us the best lobster roll at a price of $29.95 (which included fries). A little mayo, some old bay and a lemon wedge for squeezing on the side. Just awesome. Side Street is located at 49 Rodick Street in Bar Harbor. We went on a Saturday at just after noon and got seated with no wait. The outdoor seating area on the deck is packed pretty tight but it's worth it. Find a table out of the sun. The noon sun on that deck in the spots not sheltered by umbrellas was brutal.

Thurston's Lobster Pound in Bernard is about a half hour drive from Bar Harbor. It's super quiet down there with some great views of the water and lots of lobster traps. You order at the counter at Thurston's and get a number and sit down to wait for your food to be brought to you. The line was out the door and halfway to the street on the wooden walkway outside the restaurant when we got there on a Friday night and it moved really quickly. Thurston's has the efficiency thing down. Thurston's lobster roll has the right amount of lobster to bread and is served lightly dressed with mayo atop a lettuce leaf. It tasted a lot like shrimp. Lobster roll at Thurston's: $22.99.

I've already talked a lot about Red's Eats in the post above. Get there really early or be prepared to wait a long time. Price at Red's was $28.95 and you get a ton of lobster for that price. In addition to eating as much lobster as possible, we had a similar quest to eat a ton of the Maine specialty, the whoopee pie. Red's had by far the best one of these we ate. They are made locally by Glen B's Bakery. They are phenomenal. I'm sure it's the marshmallow fluff.

Tracey's Seafood in Sullivan is at the bottom of my list. It was by far the cheapest (at $12.00) and the smallest lobster roll we ate in Maine. It was dressed with mayo and had some crunchy veg in the mix. I'd say skip Tracey's entirely except that the haddock sandwich was absolutely delicious. Get it with the pickles. It really is outstanding.

If you are interested in a lobster and seals tour around Frenchman's Bay, I'd highly recommend the Lulu Lobster Boat. There were more people that we would have liked (I'd say a little more than 30) on board but the trip was super informative and really fun. They run four tours a day seven days a week in the summer season. I'd highly recommend reserving a spot in advance. We were able to make a reservation about a week ahead of time when our other tour cancelled but they were turning people away in person the day of our tour.

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Southern Music Playlist

For years now, I've toyed with the idea of creating music playlists for some of the trips that I've taken over the last eight or so (or more, even) years. You know, location-specific tunes to listen to while we drive around discovering whatever new place it is we are exploring. Maybe albums that were recorded or written in the city, state or country where we happen to be spending a few days or week or fortnight or whatever. Or music made by the place's native sons or daughters. Or even just songs about wherever it is we happen to be. It's a good idea, right? 

I always thought so, anyway.

I've never done it. 

But if there was ever a trip that called out for a need for a playlist, it was our tour of the American South, just because of the richness of musical history in that area. There's a first time for everything. This had to be done! So I made it so.

The idea was the simple part. The assembly of a list would be more complicated.

My initial idea was to make a list of 52 songs (one for each full year I've been on the planet) from my own music collection that represent to me the city of Memphis and the states of Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama with an emphasis on the four recording studios we planned to visit over the little more than a week we were spending down south. No new songs. No new purchases. Just stuff that I love and which are indisputably part of music history where we were headed.

I thought 52 was a good number but I also feared editing would be a bit of a problem on this sort of exercise, which is probably a big reason why I've never done this before. My list filled up pretty quickly and easily. I managed to find a good amount (but not too much) of music recorded in Memphis or northern Alabama or songs by artists from the places we visited. It worked. I made a couple of last minute changes but 52 came together well.

But then I thought there was some room for some extra stuff that would fit the mood of the trip (told you editing was an issue). So I added five wildcard songs that have a lot of meaning but maybe don't fit my initial criteria. 

Here's what ended up on my 52 (plus 5) song playlist. And no, I'm not writing something about every song. Or even every artist.

• Robert Johnson: Cross Road Blues / Ramblin' On My Mind / Love In Vain
• Sonny Boy Williamson: One Way Out / Checkin' Up On My Baby
• Muddy Waters: Rollin' Stone / I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man / Standing Around Crying
• Elmore James: The Sky Is Crying / Dust My Broom
• B.B. King: It's My Own Fault / Help The Poor
• Willie Nelson Featuring B.B. King: The Thrill Is Gone

So much of the story of American music started in Mississippi so it seems like the logical place to start my playlist. Without blues being sung by black musicians who were sons and daughters of sharecroppers who were sons and daughters of slaves, there might not be any rock and roll today. Black families fed up with a life of perpetual poverty and effective indentured servitude headed north along Highway 61 to Chicago, some to work in factories in the city and some to seek their fortunes making music. Some of those that didn't make it all the way to Chicago stopped and stuck in Memphis. 

All the artists above were born in Mississippi with the exception of Willie Nelson; I felt that Willie and B.B.'s version of "The Thrill Is Gone" would add another classic voice into the mix on my playlist. Sonny Boy Williamson and Muddy Waters are more famous as Chess Records (out of Chicago) artists, but Sonny Boy was instrumental in broadcasting music across the Mississippi Delta through his King Biscuit Time radio station broadcast out of Helena, Arkansas on radio station KFFA to black and white kids everywhere the signal would reach.

The most legendary of these musicians has to be Robert Johnson, an itinerant and ordinary guitar player who disappeared from Mississippi only to return as the most important blues musician of his time (and perhaps ever). That astonishing transformation led some folks to speculate that Johnson had sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads of Routes 49 and 61 in exchange for his talent. Johnson didn't dispute the story for as long as he lived. Which wasn't long. He died at age 27, which likely helped keep the crossroads mythology alive.

• Jackie Brenston with His Delta Cats: Rocket "88" 
• B.B. King: B.B. Blues
• Howlin' Wolf: How Many More Years
• Elvis Presley: That's All Right / Good Rockin' Tonight
• Johnny Cash: Cry, Cry, Cry / Guess Things Happen That Way / Ballad Of A Teenage Queen
• Jerry Lee Lewis: Great Balls Of Fire / Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On
• Live: I Walk The Line

First stop on our trip: Memphis, home of the blues and the birthplace of rock and roll. Its location at the north end of the the Mississippi delta (and within reach of KFFA's signal) allowed black musicians a place to play and make money and white kids to steal that music and transform it into something different which eventually would become rock and roll. I don't use "steal" in a judgmental way there because much of the history of rock and roll is adapting what those before you laid down as a foundation. But it was stealing.

All the tracks above were recorded at Sam Phillips' Sun Studio (or Memphis Recording Service as it was known before Phillips re-branded it) with the exception of "I Walk The Line" by Live. I think it was important to strike a little bit of a balance between the Jackie Brenston / B.B. King / Howlin' Wolf tracks and the later Sun tracks recorded by white musicians. All of them are excellent. If there's a regret here, it's that I didn't put B.B. King's "3 O'Clock Blues" on the playlist because I think it's far superior to "B.B. Blues". However, I didn't own it and so didn't include it. In fact, I still don't.

So about that Live track...

Live's version of Johnny Cash's "I Walk The Line" was pulled from the Good Rockin' Tonight: The Legacy of Sun Records album. My dad bought that album for me for Christmas years and years ago and features artists I love re-recording songs originally recorded at Sun Studio. It's an awesome album which would be even awesome-er if I could lop off the Kid Rock track at the end. Not because his version of "Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee" is a bad song but just because I object to all things Kid Rock. The best track on the album is Live's interpretation of "I Walk The Line". It's sinister and mean and I love it. Had to put that song on the playlist despite the fact it wasn't actually recorded in Memphis. Sometimes you have to bend the rules.

• Booker T and The MGs: Green Onions
• William Bell: You Don't Miss Your Water / Any Other Way 
• Sam And Dave: Hold On! I'm Comin' / Soul Man
• Eddie Floyd: Knock On Wood
• Johnny Daye: What'll I Do For Satisfaction
• Otis Redding: Respect / I've Been Loving You Too Long / (Sittin' On) The Dock Of the Bay
• Albert King: Born Under A Bad Sign / Laundromat Blues

There were two great record labels in Memphis in the 1950s and 1960s: Sun Studio downtown and Stax Records on the south side of town. Sun gets 11 tracks on the playlist; Stax gets 12. It's not a competition. It just worked out that way. But it does speak to the strength of Stax's catalog and my love for parts of that catalog that there are more Stax tracks than Sun. 

My favorite Stax artist is Albert King. There's no question about it. His voice and his guitar playing are so smooth and completely unlike anyone else. I could have stuck his entire Born Under A Bad Sign album (which is really just a collection of singles) on the playlist and been happy. But there had to be cuts, so Albert ends up with just two tracks. Stax was a family through and through. If you need any proof of that, look no further than the authors of the titial song of Albert King's album: William Bell and Booker T. Jones, who also have tracks on the playlist.

Two other notes about the Stax portion of my playlist. First, Otis Redding is just incredible. Among all the young deaths in music history, Otis' has to be one of the least well known. 26 years old. And he was just getting warmed up. Second, there is no situation that I wouldn't listen to the two Sam and Dave tracks on this list. These two songs always make me feel better.

• Aretha Franklin: I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You / Do Right Woman, Do Right Man
• Wilson Pickett: Mustang Sally
• The Rolling Stones: Brown Sugar / Wild Horses / You Gotta Move
• Paul Simon: Loves Me Like A Rock / Kodachrome

The Muscle Shoals portion of my playlist could have been a lot longer, but unlike Sun and Stax, most of the artists who recorded at FAME Studios and the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio were not from one of the states we visited. So I decided to just crop it at the best of the best.

Because they ended up on two of my favorite albums ever (with Sticky Fingers being THE favorite ever), I elected to include every song recorded by Aretha Franklin and The Rolling Stones on my playlist. But if there's a favorite story about an artist traveling to Muscle Shoals to record some music, it's Paul Simon visiting there in 1973 to record one song for his There Goes Rhymin' Simon album.

Simon booked four days in Muscle Shoals to record his song "Take Me To The Mardi Gras" with the black musicians he had heard on the Staple Singers' Be Altitude: Respect Yourself album. He got surprised twice in Muscle Shoals: once when he found out none of the musicians he heard on the album he loved were black and again when the band nailed his song in a half a day. He ended up recording half his album in the studio with the leftover time. I think it's worth watching the Youtube video of the four band members discussing Simon's visit. The link is here. 

Robert Johnson's grave, Little Missionary Baptist Church, Greenwood, Mississippi.

• Hank Williams: You Win Again
• The Band: Ophelia
• Pine Hill Haints: Trains Have No Names

There is not a lot of music made by artists from Alabama and Arkansas in my music collection. But we were spending some time driving through those states so I thought it was important to include at least some music made by folks from those two states. 

The Pine Hill Haints are my favorite all time band from Alabama. You likely don't know their music. I met them in a bar below a record store (the bar was appropriately called The Basement) in Nashville in 2006. Their approach to music, which included heavy washboard and washtub bass action on most all their songs, intrigued me and I ended up buying a few of their albums which I still pull out and listen to way more than I listen to a lot of other music in my collection.  And when I say "met them" I really mean that. I was talking football while watching a preseason game with some dude at the bar when I was waiting for the show to start. That dude turned out to be Jamie Barrier, who is the lead singer and guitarist. 

I also knew that any playlist that was meant for a trip to Arkansas had to include at least one track sung by Levon Helm in The Band. "Ophelia" is perhaps my favorite track by The Band. I find it to be one of their most musical tracks and it's for sure my favorite Levon Helm vocal. Easy choice on that one.

Hank Williams made the cut because has Alabama produced a more influential musician? I tried to pick a track that was not too denigrating towards his wife, as most of his songs were.

Beale Street at night, Memphis.

• Elvis Presley: Jailhouse Rock / Suspicious Minds
• Dusty Springfield: Son Of A Preacher Man / Willie & Laura Mae Jones
• Big Star: In The Street

For the last five of my original 52 songs on my playlist, I went back to Memphis for more Elvis, one song off Big Star's #1 Album record (which is renowned by musicians but I can't for the life of me see the genius of the album) and two tracks by Dusty Springfield.

It is difficult for me to describe how incredible Dusty In Memphis is. On the first play, it sounds like it belongs on an easy listening station that only people old enough to be my parents would really listen to. I first bought this album on reputation sometime in the 1990s I'm guessing and one day started listen to it a few years later. The sexiness and sultriness set against the hot, sticky South where it was recorded lingers on every track. It is desire, it is forbidden, it is desperate, it is seductive. It never gets old. It's one of the most incredible collection of songs I've ever heard. I've consistently maintained that if I could have only five albums to listen to for the rest of my life they would be Sticky Fingers (The Rolling Stones), Abbey Road (The Beatles), a Mark Knopfler album, a Bob Dylan album (my preference on the Knopfler and Dylan albums keeps shifting) and Dusty In Memphis. It is that good.

Perhaps obviously, Dusty In Memphis was recorded in the Bluff City, specifically at Chips Moman's now long gone American Music Studio. To be more accurate here, I guess I should say that the instrumental tracks were recorded in Memphis. Dusty couldn't sing in Memphis. Just couldn't do it. Stage fright or shyness or whatever. Her vocals were recorded in New York.

The most famous song on this album is Dusty's version of "Son of a Preacher Man". The other song on my playlist, "Willie & Laura Mae Jones" was not on the original album, but it was on the expanded edition I fell in love with when I really got into the album. I think it's the most southern track on the deluxe edition so I included it on my playlist, even though it was not recorded in Memphis at all. I cheated with Live's "I Walk The Line". I'm cheating here too.

Real Deal Cowboy Neal, King's Palace Cafe, Memphis. Sometimes the best blues is found in an alley.

The living room at Graceland. The stained glass peacocks are amazing. Seriously!

• Bob Dylan: Only A Pawn In Their Game
• Neil Young: Southern Man
• Paul Simon: Graceland
• Depeche Mode: Personal Jesus
• U2: Pride (In The Name Of Love)

So this is my "plus five" list. Five songs that are completely relevant to the area of the country we visited while also being written and recorded by artists who have little to no historical connection to the deep South.

The Dylan and U2 tracks are both about assassinations of Civil Rights leaders. "Only A Pawn In Their Game" is about the driveway slaying of Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers in Mississippi in 1963. I find this song a little strange because while Dylan is (appropriately) pointing the finger of blame at the politicians who were convincing poor uneducated whites to kill for them, it sounds like he's absolving the man who pulled the trigger of responsibility. U2's "Pride" is about the killing of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

"Graceland" and "Personal Jesus" are both on this list because of Elvis. "Graceland" is about a man feeling compelled to visit Elvis Presley's home, Graceland, but it's really about the dissolution of his marriage. There are some awesome lines in the song that represent the area of the country in just magical ways ("The Mississippi delta is shining like a national guitar"). Depeche Mode took their inspiration from a Priscilla Presley penned memoir about her time with Elvis. Elvis is her "Personal Jesus".

Finally, I couldn't add five songs to my playlist and not add Neil Young's "Southern Man". It is a scathingly accurate condemnation of how the southern states kept black men on the bottom rung of society through an institutionalized system of violent intimidation and frequent lynchings. It (along with Young's equally scathing "Alabama") caused Lynyrd Skynyrd to pen "Sweet Home Alabama" in response and in defense of the South. As much as I love Skynyrd's music and particularly their first two albums, Neil Young is in the right here.

So that's it. That's the story of the music I took with me on a trip to explore the Civil Rights Movement. This was a lot of work and I'm not sure I'm making a trip-specific playlist again any time soon. But it was probably the right trip to do this for the first time. And never say never again. 

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How We Did It

We ended up visiting a lot of music sites in our 10 days in the American South. I've discussed some of them in my post about the four studios we visited but I thought it would be worth writing down the others we stopped by to pay our respects (literally in some cases) to some of the artists that I put on this playlist.

First of all...yes, we went to Graceland. It's overblown, far too self-important and way too expensive (the cheapest ticket to get inside Graceland is $75!!!!) but it had to be done. I visited way back in 2006 and it was nothing like this. We met someone later that same week who blamed it all on Lisa-Marie. Maybe that's true. I guess if you can get people to pay that much, go for it. But it is ridiculously priced. The property is open daily (wouldn't you be if you could get at least $75 from every visitor?) and the website encourages you to purchase tickets in advance. We didn't and did just fine, but we were also visiting at the tail end (maybe) of the COVID-19 pandemic. I'm deliberately not including a link to the Graceland website.

To get the complete Elvis experience, we also visited the Elvis Presley Birthplace in Tupelo, Mississippi. I think it's worth a stop if you are in the area. Admission to Elvis' first home and birthplace, his original (relocated) church and a museum are all separately priced at $9 each, although there's a discount if you buy admission to more than one of the buildings. We visited the home only and it took about five minutes. You can walk the property for free and if you don't care that much about seeing two rooms of a 1930s shotgun shack, you can probably save the $9 each and still have just as good an experience as we did.

We spent one long day elsewhere in Mississippi which included stops at three music-related sites. We stopped by the crossroads of Routes 61 and 49 on the way down to Indianola, Mississippi to visit the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center. If you can't find the crossroads, plug Abe's Bar-B-Q into the directions app of your choice; it's right next to the crossroads itself (we actually parked in their parking lot). I'd completely recommend a visit to the B.B. King Museum. B.B. was such an awesome human being but the museum also conveys really well what it was like to be a sharecropper in Mississippi between the two world wars. 

In between the crossroads and B.B. King's Museum, we stopped at the likely grave of Robert Johnson. I say likely because there are multiple sites out there that claim to be the last resting place of Johnson. Based on my research, the one at the Little Missionary Baptist Church in Greenwood, Mississippi seemed to be the most credible. The grave is towards the back of the cemetery, which sits to the left of the church itself. Look for the collection box next to the grave under a pecan tree. There is a sign describing Johnson's life at the entrance to the driveway to the property. That sign also describes a visit made by Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant to the site. Can you imagine driving around rural Mississippi looking for Johnson's grave and finding Robert Plant hanging out there when you arrived? 

Finally, some words about Beale Street. While pulling our itinerary together for this trip, I read some information online about the poor quality of music on Beale Street and that you might be better off going elsewhere in Memphis to hear some live music. While I agree that you might have to search a bit for the specific type of music you want to listen to, I found the quality of the music to be no different than what I listened to on my prior two trips to Memphis. And I found the music to be excellent on all three trips, although admittedly I found some venues to be less than satisfactory. If I were heading back to Memphis any time soon, I'd head straight for the outdoor venue at King's Palace Cafe and the indoor Blues City Band Box. I would avoid B.B. King's Blues Club (too many covers of classic rock rather than blues songs) and Rum Boogie Cafe (the bands here have not matched the quality I've found elsewhere on Beale Street). But there IS good music to be found on Beale Street.

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