We just spent the weekend in Rockland, Maine, eating pie. Pie for breakfast, pie for lunch, pie for tea-time, pie for bedtime snack. Key lime pie, pizza pie, meat pie, whoopee pie (you have to be from New England to know that these are frosting-filled chocolate cake sandwiches). We were on a pie high. It was this mid-coast Maine town’s annual Pies on Parade, when every oven must be going 24/7. Not just restaurants and cafes, but museums, stores, B&Bs, even the Project Puffin Center, where we had “cream puffins” — fetching little bird-shaped cream-puffs with orange beaks. Between pies we found a surprising lot to do, even though a snowstorm dropped nearly a foot of snow all day on Friday. Saturday morning in the Farnsworth Art Museum we saw two rooms filled with paintings by Andrew Wyeth; and others displaying Winslow Homer, Childe Hassam and Gilbert Stuart. Then we drove out to the Owls Head Transportation Museum, where my husband, Tim, ogled vintage MGs and I pictured Clark Gable behind the wheel of the gleaming Duisenberg and Snoopy piloting the Sopwith Pup. For this occasion they did “pie pairings” — Quiche Lorraine with a 1909 De Dion-Bouton Voiture and Zweibelkuchen with an early German plane. Back in town, we learned about lighthouses (and lemon meringue pie) at the Maine Lighthouse Museum, then hit Main Street. This wasn’t just a grab-a-bite-and-go affair. We were invited to sit down in pubs and restaurants to savor wedges of mince pie (made with dried wild Maine blueberries), flavorful shrimp-and-goat-cheese pizzettas, and pear tarte with a tender brioche crust. We nibbled delicate little tartlets filled with fresh berries at the Captain Lindsey House B&B, and tasted six wines with our quiche at Wine Seller. After a few stops, we began greeting fellow pie-eaters and comparing notes. We’d driven a mere 5 hours ourselves, but some people had flown into Portland and driven up. We felt like natives. Between noshes we browsed in Hall’s Antiques and Lucky Dog, a gallery of works by 26 outstanding Maine craftsmen. We sampled rare olive oils at Fiori, along with the only whoopee pie I’ve ever loved — made with Meyer-lemon-infused olive oil! When we finally adjourned to our room at Berry Manor Inn, we couldn’t resist a bedtime snack: a wedge of tart cherry pie. If anybody had told me I’d spend a bitter cold weekend on the Maine coast trudging through snow eating whoopee pies and actually enjoying every minute of it, I’d have said they were pie-eyed. But the weekend was such a complete break from our usual schedule and so relaxing (and delicious) that I’ve already got Pies on Parade marked on next year’s calendar. — Barbara Radcliffe Rogers, guest blogger