Mark & Teri's Travels: Lenny, The Chocolate Moose

The Maine Audubon offers daily guided canoe tours near Portland, Maine. Since there are plenty of disc golf courses and other fun things to do in this area, we decided several days were necessary to see it all.

We arrived at Scarborough Marsh early with the thought that we could do some birding before the canoe tour started. We were surprised to see that there was very little parking and not a lot of area to bird.

Scarborough Marsh is owned and managed by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. It’s a 3,100 acre estuary and is the largest salt marsh in the state.

We thought about just renting kayaks (which we prefer over canoes) but decided to just go ahead and join the guided tour.

Our guide started the tour with a 20 minute talk about the area. It was pretty basic and was a little boring. After everyone was fitted for a life jacket, we got in our canoe’s and headed out into the foggy marsh.

At $13 each we weren’t expecting a long tour but we were surprised when we were told it was time to turn back. We really hadn’t been out very long.

We found a map of the canoe trails and hope to get back to this area to rent kayaks and explore the area on our own.

Across the street from the parking area was a short trail that went along a wetland. We saw a few birds (certainly more than we had on the canoe trip) along the trail.

American Black Duck

Great Egret and Great Blue Heron

Common Tern

I had looked up attractions in this area and came across an interesting candy shop with a life size chocolate moose. So we headed to Len Libby Candies and Gifts.

Lenny, the chocolate moose, has been standing in the same spot since July 1, 1997. He is 1,700 pounds of milk chocolate. He’s not solid. There is a chicken wire frame under the chocolate. The “pond” he is standing in is white chocolate tinted with blue food coloring.

I’m not sure when the bears were added but Mom (Libby - 380 pounds of solid dark chocolate) and the cubs (Cocoa and Chips - 80 pounds each of solid dark chocolate) were also there with Lenny.

There was a really good short movie being played showing Lenny being built. We bought some ice cream and settled in to learn all about Lenny, the chocolate moose.

We had 3 1/2 days to spend in this area. Mark had picked out disc golf courses he wanted to play and I had more tourist attractions lined up.

Eartha is the world’s largest rotating/revolving globe (according to Guinness Book of records). It is housed in a three-story glass gallery at DeLorme (now Garmin) Headquarters. Eartha was designed by CEO David DeLorme and completed in 1998.

It is just over 41 feet in diameter and was designed at a scale of 1:1,000,000 (one inch equals 16 miles). California is 3 1/2 feet tall.

It is tilted at 23/5 degrees, just like Earth and is rotated by an electric motor.

A second motor swivels the entire tilted, rotating globe around the attachment point to the floor. It takes about 18 minutes to complete a cycle.

We have seen a lot of “big” attractions in Maine. I could probably write a whole blog just on big attractions we’ve seen.

Big F Indian is in Freeport. There are several ideas on what the F stands for. We’ll just say it stand for Freeport and leave it at that.

His official name is Chief Passamaquoddy. He was built in 1969, stands 40 feet tall and weights 1,500 pounds. He used to stand in front of the Casco Bay Trading Company but the trading company is long gone.

The Fawcett’s Toy Museum was across the street from where we had lunch. The weather was cloudy and misty so we decided to walk on over and take a look. I don’t think we’ve ever been to a toy museum. The area immediately inside the door has toys for sale and it’s free to walk around. There is a fee to go into the museum (I don’t remember how much it was). This place was packed with items.