Stone Soup Books: Camden, Maine

Up a flight of stairs off Camden's main shopping street is a handful of rooms absolutely crammed floor to ceiling with an enticing array of used books thematically arranged; I came away with volumes on John Franklin's doomed mission to the arctic, as well as a small stack of obscure memoirs by once-celebrated travelers.

Afterward, it's worth walking a few blocks to visit the distractingly pretty public library and its reading garden, nestled into a hill overlooking the blue Atlantic.