You’d need a month to really explore all of the nooks and crannies of this area—some Mainers take their whole lives to really do it justice. If you only have a few days, you’ll have to strategize to hit the highlights.

If you’ve come for lobsters and lighthouses, then Rockland provides a good home base, as it’s home to the annual Maine Lobster Festival, as well as the Maine Lighthouse Museum. It also teems with seafood restaurants, most of which are open year-round, although hours vary with the season. Rockland provides a good introduction to artists’ long relationship with the coast through the works exhibited at the Farnsworth Art Museum. From here it’s a short drive to the most stunning lighthouse in the region, Pemaquid Point Light.

If history is your thing, you’ll find plenty of it in the relatively untouristed Bath-Brunswick area, home to the Maine Maritime Museum and several smaller but interesting museums at Bowdoin College.

If you have more than a few days to explore the area, it’s almost mandatory to get out onto the open ocean. For many people that means going to one of the islands in Penobscot Bay, where you can leave the bustle of the mainland behind and breathe in the salt air of quiet fishing villages. While each island has its advocates, perhaps the most unusual is Monhegan Island, a longtime artists colony that has neither cars nor electricity.

If you can’t decide which island to visit, book a Windjammer Cruise on one of the many schooners that leave from Camden. Ranging from several days to a week, the cruises will let you be blown by the wind to whatever anchorages happen to come.