The Inn at Diamond Cove
Stepping back in time on a Maine island that became the site of Fort McKinley
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A Different World Nearby
Yesterday with our grandsons Ryan and Jake we took a 20-minute ferry ride from Portland, Maine, to a different world.
Great Diamond Island, a 186-acre forest in Casco Bay, is entirely private except for a couple of restaurants and an elegant hotel, the Inn at Diamond Cove.
We’d planned to have lunch at the Diamond’s Edge Restaurant a short walk from the dock, but it was closed.
We started walking toward a second restaurant, but it was closed also. I called the inn, but my cell phone couldn’t make the connection. For a few moments I wondered if this would be my first big fail at Grampa and D Camp, stranding our party a long walk from our hotel on an empty stomach.
My panic didn’t last long.
An alert staffer at the inn saw a call coming in with no voice and figured it was a stranded ferry arrival. She drove the inn’s big, black van to fetch us.
I was looking forward to a lobster roll, but there was no lobster available. I had a decent pulled-pork sandwich instead. Darlene had a pasta salad, and the boys had grilled cheese sandwiches with chips.
I love how poised my grandsons, 10 and 8, are at restaurants. They give their orders precisely to the server. While waiting for the food to arrive Ryan depleted his drink.
“Could I have a refill of my lemonade?” he asked the server when she was near. I saw her smile at his 8-year-old confidence.
The boys are easy to entertain at a restaurant table. Last night I saw Ryan moving ice cubes from the lemonade into his mouth, so I suggested timing how long he could make them last. Great fun, and Jake joined in.
Service is friendly but slow here at the hotel, so we brought our Kindles down for supper and read for an hour, occasionally sharing snippets of what we were reading. After supper we headed to the pool and the hot tub in the chilly evening air.
Inspired by the tour of Fort McKinley after lunch, the boys built an elaborate fort in the living room of our suite. They used bedroom pillows, sheets, and bolsters from the sofa bed where Jake was going to sleep. Ryan slept in the second bed in the bedroom, next to ours. Building a fort in the suite is something we’d have missed if we were traveling with two other adults.
The two-hour tour was conducted by a seasonal resident of the island, Charles Goldberg. Ryan and Jake asked good questions and listened to all the details of gun sizes, eras of the fort’s history, and how the site has been turned into condos and a hotel.
Charles pointed out a rec hall which still contains two bowling lanes where you have to set up the duckpins yourself and roll the balls back to the end of the lane from where they crash into the pins. That was as much fun as the bowling itself.
We chose Great Diamond Island this year, because we’d already taken the boys to Peaks Island on a previous Grampa and D Camp adventure. Peaks is like New York City compared with the eerie quiet of Great Diamond, where there are 75 year-round residents. Peaks has 900 year-rounders.
Today we plan to ride hotel bikes to explore the car-free dirt roads of the island. I bet we will also return to the bowling alley.
Check-out will be in time to take the hotel van to the 12:15 pm ferry—a short ride back to the present day.
