KENNEBUNKPORT — It’s 2 p.m. and we’re on the coastal edge of Kennbunkport, Maine, some two hours north of Boston. We’re parked along a small inlet, some 300 yards or so across from the summer home of former Pres. George H.W. Bush, the elder, the 41st president of the United States.
This is not how I imagined I’d be spending my 41st birthday.
But here I am, watching as a young woman in a two-piece bathing suit wraps a towel around herself and walks up a dock back toward this compound, while probably a dozen or so tourists all watch from across a small bay.
At first I don’t realize this is actually the former president’s home. We’d been driving aimlessly through Kennebunkport and this just happened to be the street on which we’d turned, only to wind around down to one of the most stunning pieces of property that we’d seen yet.
It’s a relatively small compound — isolated, really — because it’s actually a tiny little peninsula on this stretch of the cape. The home itself is not particularly grand. But the property is truly spectacular, in the way it stretches out into a calm sea, with high tide just lapping at rocks not more than a few dozen meters off the front manicured grass.
We stopped simply because it was just a stunning, breathtaking view.
It’s not long before my suspicions about the property are confirmed: As I squint across this bay, I see a Texas flag.
Kennebunkport may be known for many things, but for most of us, we know it as the summer home of the elder George Bush.
The property itself was purchased by George Herbert Walker, Bush’s grandfather, a prominent St. Louis banker in the 19th Century, and passed down through the family over the years.
The draw to this particular plot is obvious: The view is spectacular, and the gentle ocean breezes that blow gently across your face certainly don’t hurt. Beyond the shallow reefs surrounding the peninsula, the ocean stretches into the great beyond.
Near the front of the property itself I can see, in the distance, a somewhat elderly man walk around, talking to some of whom are obviously staff.
The view, of course, is amazing — and seeing the waves crash and ocean lap remain something I will always remember.
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