It is low tide in Eastport, Maine,  the right time to go clam digging.  This part of the coast experiences the most extreme low and high tides.  It can drop as low as 28 feet below the sea level , changing the landscape dramatically and opening clam beds.  If you don’t mind getting a little muddy, dirty, and sweaty, grab yourself a pair of rubber gloves, a pitch fork, and a bucket, and go dig some clams.  Have some fun in the muddy sand!

Right in our backyard, there is a clam bed waiting to be explored. The smell of salt water and seaweed flows around the area making us more excited about finding clams. As soon as you walk on the ocean bed, you hear this subtle pop from little holes in the sand, revealing the exact location of the clams.  Bigger holes mean bigger clams.  As soon as you start digging and bring them to the surface, sometimes the clams squirt out a stream of water like a little fountain, splashing us and making us laugh.  It is good to dig five or six inches from the holes so you don’t stab the little guys. The clams should be bigger than two inches in size in order to keep it.  

During low tide, we dig out some clams and we washed them in the salt water.

In an hour, Jeremy and I dug around ten pounds of clams.  We try to dig enough for one meal for two, since the seafood is always better eaten fresh. After we rinsed the clams, we placed them in salt water from the ocean and left them overnight so they can spit their sand out from inside.  Keeping them in salt water is important because the fresh water will kill them. 

The next day, I used a sponge to scrub them and rinse them well to eliminate all the sand out.  We boiled  the clams in white wine sauce with onion for about ten minutes and garnished them with fresh parsley.  The clams tasted sweet with a hint of the ocean.  Packed with lean protein and nutrients, the clams provided such a great meal for us to remember.  

Another recipe that I have tried that I found in NYT Cooking: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1015765-steamed-clams-in-spicy-tomato-sauce, was steamed clams in tomato sauce.  Just to make it easy to eat, I removed all the shells and added a piece of toast.  So good!!!  

A stop through Adirondacks, New York.

Wavy and windy roads embalmed with fresh pine air welcomed us to our next destination in Adirondacks.   The Adirondack Park region covers around 6.1 million acres of land, which hosts mountain ranges covered by green unending forests and thousands of hiking trails. Wildlife like black bear, wild turkey, deer, coyotes, beavers, and many more, roam freely and admired by nature enthusiasts. 

Our temporary neighbor.

  Numerous bodies of water, rivers and lakes, enrich the area offering views of serenity and peace, and also diverse species of fish.  Small mouth bass, perch, lake trout, striped bass, and salmon are among the most preferred species for those who love fishing.  

Cranberry Lake, Adirondack Park.

It was a perfect spot for us to stop, recharge and inhale some of that fresh and healthy pine air.  We booked an Airbnb, a small house in Croghan, NY, with tall pine trees, birds, and deer being the only neighbors around.  It was so quiet, it felt uncanny.  Traveling from a busy city like Chicago to this destination was a complete change of scenery.  The transition from the infinite city views of concrete blocks and city buzz to pine trees, wildlife, absolute screaming silence — an extreme and that was well desired.  We were happy, we were thrilled to be spending one week in one of the biggest park in the country,  the Adirondack. So much to see and to explore.  

Not too far from our little hidden cabin, there was a dam where we tried fishing and caught a small mouth bass. For the first time I understood the excitement of fishermen when I felt a hard pull from my rod and a fish attached to it.  It took almost an entire day, whole can of warms and a load of patience, to catch that small mouth bass.

Our next adventure was hiking throughout the park.  Jeremy found Beach Mill Pound trail, a five mile hike trough wild ferns and forest.  Our hike ended up at the Independence River, where we found a camping site with a camp fire set up and a pan hanging out from a tree.  Someone else enjoyed this rapid river before us and left the pan for someone else.  We did not see a single soul on that hike and often I thought about seeing a black bear but, according to locals, that is rare to encounter.   

After a few days, we tried another trail, wild and beautiful in Wanakena, Adirondack Park, leading to the Cat Mountain.  The trail was ten miles long, there and back, with with streams serpentines cutting our ways, covered with logs, opening the path to cross and continue to view glass lakes reflecting sharp and tall pine trees and the rich blue sky.  Huge spider webs, careful crafted with little glistening beads of dew, were hanging from the trees in the early morning.  Gleaming light dispersed throughout the forest, the branches breaking it and casting it on the forest ground, covered by ferns and pine needles. The entire forest exhaled pine perfumed air that soothed our nostrils, inviting us to take deep breaths of it to fill every single cell in our body to refresh it and rejuvenate.  

The one thing that was annoying on the trail were the black flies that wouldn’t go away, even with bug spray. They roamed around our heads like an undesired crown throughout the entire trail.  Luckily, we brought our rain coats and covered our heads which made it bearable to hike.  Once we made it to the top of the Cat Mountain, the wind picked up, chasing all the flies away.   The food we brought with us taste it so much better up in the mountain and the naps we took took there felt that we were transported to another dimension.  

The view offered us was infinite hills covered by green forest and still bodies of water.  The water was so clear that we could see the bottom of the lakes where rocks and fallen tree logs were slowly decaying.  The sky was deep blue with cotton clouds running slowly by.  We laid there for more than an hour to make sure we can embrace all the Adirondack beauty in, to last forever in our memories.