My grandfather, Kenneth Kinsman Atkinson, was born in Fryeburg, Maine. His family moved to California before he was 10, but I had long dreamed of going there. I own a pair of oil painting by B. T. Newman. One is of Sebago Lake, the other of Jockey Cap. Newman was a well-known artist from Fryeburg. Sebago Lake is nearby, and Jockey Cap is right in town. I remember my grandfather telling stories about rolling Easter eggs down it’s steep side. The two paintings hung in my grandparents’ house for many years. They were gifts to my grandfather from his sister Leona.
In July 2025, my own family vacationed in Maine. We started in Portland, which is was a very long trip that included two changes of planes. A couple of days after, we drove to Fryeburg and climbed up Jockey Cap ourselves.
The feature itself isn’t any taller than the hills that rise up behind my home in Martinez, though the general area of Southwestern Maine is mountainous. It was an easy walk up to the top, which remains a bald cap of granite. Trees have filled in around it over the past hundred years as compared to the painting.
I don’t know where my grandfather’s family lived other than it being North Fryeburg rather than in Fryeburg itself, which is where my great grandfather, Leonard Woods Atkinson, practiced medicine. We drove up to North Fryeburg just to look around. There wasn’t much.
From Fryeburg, it was easy to venture into New Hampshire, and we drove up Mount Washington, which was was a very steep climb into frigid temperatures.
Then we moved on to Atkinson, Maine. This is the township from where my father told me our lineage of Atkinsons originated in the Americas. We stayed in a cabin surrounded by farms. It had a very well stocked collection of liquor with a written rule that you must add as many bottles as you take, on the honor system, of course.
It was a peaceful spot, and I couldn’t help but think of my ancestors from hundreds of years before clearing out the wilderness.
One of the days we were there, we drove over to Bingham to do a trip with North Country Rivers, doing a rafting run down the Kennebec. We hadn’t been on a rafting trip for several years. The weather was just right. The guides were like characters out of Meatballs.
After leaving Atkinson, we went farther north, all the way to Machias. Along the way, we stopped at the Big Chicken Barn, which sells used books and antiques. I have been a serious hunter for used fantasy paperbacks, and this place didn’t really hold up to the better places I’ve been to in California, Nevada and Utah. There were lots of odd antiques to amuse us, though.
Since we were so far north, we make a trip over the border into Canada one day, over the bridge at Lubec onto Campobello Island. FDR had a summer home there. All around the Lubec area were beautiful views of the water.
We wrapped up our trip in Bar Harbor, staying in another vacation cabin outside of town. We rented bikes one day and rode around a lake. Another day we did a pelagic tour to see puffins.
I was thankful that my wife, Vicky, planned this trip for all four of us. With the boys growing up and being more busy, it was nice to be all together for an extended time, having adventures. And I really appreciated visiting my ancestral home.