Return to Maine

Although we are posting this blog entry the second week of November, we actually returned to Maine the third week of August.

Penobscot River going through downtown Bangor, Maine.
After a wonderful six weeks in the Canadian Maritimes  we returned to Maine and the Pumpkin Patch RV Resort. We had stayed there over the 4th of July weekend prior to going into Canada and returned because it is a very nice RV Park with very friendly people. Somehow we forgot to get any pictures!
Surprisingly, when we returned to Maine it was HOT! The temperatures were in the 80s and 90s. So, it seemed like a perfect time to head to the ocean. Acadia National Park is about a 50 mile drive from Bangor. We packed a picnic lunch, Raider and returned to the National Park. My, how things had changed since our time there in June. We had noticed that the whole Bar Harbor and Acadia Park area was becoming more and  more crowded each day as June went along. In August the place was PACKED, even at mid-week. The trailheads and beach access parking lots were so crowded with cars that the park service just had people park in the right lane of the road.
Fortunately, for us the one parking area that wasn’t full was near a great picnic spot we had found near Otter Cover.

View from our picnic spot at Otter Cove
More pictures around Otter Cove:




Just to prove that we do still watch birds, I thought I would include a few bird pictures:
Great Black-backed Gull
Herring Gull
Black Guillemot
While we were staying in Bangor they had the annual “The American Folk Festival on the Bangor Waterfront”. This is a very popular two day event held in downtown Bangor along the Penobscot River.

Ceilidh Group from Cape Breton Island at the Bangor American Folk Festival

The crowd enjoying music from all over the world

The Festival is held on the Penobscot River, Bangor, Maine
Retune to Maine slideshow:

Maine – Acadia National Park and Mount Desert Island

View from the top of Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park

Acadia National Park is the oldest National Park east of the Mississippi River, established in 1919.  Cadillac Mountain shown above is the highest point on the Island and has great views in all directions.

View of Bar Harbor Village from the top of Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park

A shoreline "Cottage" on Mount Desert Island

About 1/2 of Mount Desert Island is inside the National Park.

There are miles of scenic Maine coastline in Arcadia National Park

Herring Gull and crab parts

Sand Beach,  Acadia National Park

Other parts of Mount Desert Island include the Bass Harbor Lighthouse

In all of our many Lighthouse visits this is the first time that the Lighthouse Keepers house was still in use.

Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse’s Red light

Lobster fisherman on the way to work

Another part of Mount Desert Island is the harbor and village of Bar Harbor. Bar Harbor is a true “tourist town”; a lot of Motels, B&Bs, place to eat and T-shirt shops.

During our second week at Bar Harbor the Island Shuttle system started its Summer Service. It is an absolutely free amazing service that cover the entire island. The bus came right into our RV Park to pick us up. Although the buses have many regular stops; outside of the actual village of Bar Harbor shuttle bus will also drop you off and pick you anywhere that you request. Since parking both in Bar Harbor and at the various scenic points and trail heads is at a premium it was great to have this service available for everything from getting groceries, going to church and going on hikes.  The buses also have bike racks and they have a special  “bikers bus” that pulls a trailer that carries bikes to the bike and carriage only roads. As we found out in Zion National Park last fall bus shuttle service make for great point to point hiking.

 

This brand new perfectly straight boardwalk continued on for 1/2 mile on one  of our hikes.

Scenes from our hike on the boardwalk:

Our site at the RV Park during Mid-week:

Birding notes:

We spent 4 weeks in Maine and it is now our favorite state east of Rockies. Maine has an amazing amount of water, they have miles of huge rives and lakes. Near where we stayed in Augusta there is Long Pond. This “pond” is 2 miles long and 1/2 mile wide. Shockingly what we didn’t see were any fresh water birds at all! Not even Mallards, Canada Geese or even American Coots. We did see a couple of Bald Eagles and one Great Blue Heron. Maine has 3,000 miles of shoreline but, we didn’t see any shorebirds at all. I can understand that the Maine shoreline is very rocky and may not be the best place for shorebirds. However, I would have thought it ideal for Turnstones and Oyster Catchers. We did see a few of the following birds: Common Eiders, Great Black-backed, Bonaparte’s Gull,  Herring Gulls, Great and Double-crested Cormorants, on the ocean and bays. However, considering the amount of ocean and the number of bays and coves we really didn’t see many birds.

The bird that seemed to be everywhere and singing while we were on Mount Desert Island was the American Redstart.

photo courtesy of BirdForum.net

More pictures on the slideshow

Maine – Pemaquid Lighthouse

Pemaquid Lighthouse

Maine has 3,300 miles of sea shore because of all of the coves it has, so it has 61 lighthouses! A Docent told us that only 12 can be reached by road. There are so many little islands that it’s hard to tell whether the land is a peninsula or an island! And there aren’t too many sandy beaches to be found. The rocky coast is made up of huge granite slabs extending out into the sea and then dropping off! In some places they have fjords that drop off from the rock shelf it is so deep! It reminded us of the shores of Nova Scotia, just about 100+ miles across the bay from Maine’s coast line.

While in Augusta, Maine we went exploring the sea shore and found the Pemaquid Lighthouse, which was commissioned in 1827 when John Quincy Adams was president. The contractor mixed the mortar we sea water and the tower had to be replaced in 1835. Pemaquid Lighthouse, is only 38 feet tall. That makes it one of the easiest lighthouse to but the steps are very narrow and steep.

Pemaquid Lighthouse, is only 38 feet tall and 10 feet wide at the top. That makes it one of the easiest lighthouse to climb but the steps are very narrow and steep.

The Fourth-order Fresnel lens at the top of the lighthouse.

The view from  the top of the lighthouse.

The tower Bastion of Fort William Henry, rebuilt in 1908.

Very near Pemaquid Lighthouse is a Maine  State Park and the site of Fort William Henry. This area along the Maine coast has a fascinating history of a repeating cycle of settlement, Indian trouble, pirate attacks, political problems, abandonment and then settlement again. I had no idea that pirates raided this far north. Depending on who controlled the area it could be French or English pirates. The local Indians may act on their own or again, depending on who controlled the area could be allied with either the French or the English. Political problems because Maine wasn’t thought of as a separate colony, but as a part of Massachusetts. In an effort to hold the area the Massachusetts Governor spent two-thirds of the colony's budget to construct a stone fort. The fort built here was extraordinary for its time. The workers used 2,000 cartloads of stone, build walls 10 to 22 feet high and a bastion 29 feet high. The fort housed 20 cannon and a garrison of 60 soldiers. Yet only 4 years later local Indians upset of their treatment by the English allied with the French and easily defeated it.

 

Views from the top of the Bastion.

I took this picture of a Lobster fishermen loading  his traps as we had lunch on outside deck in the harbor. Along the Maine coast there are so many lobster traps that you could almost walk to Canada on them.

The backside of Fort Popham at the mouth of the Kennebec River.

In 1861 construction began on a granite block fort at the mouth of the Kennebec River to protect the Bath Ship Works and the Maine capitol at August from any attempted attacks by Confederate Raiders. The fort had 30 foot high walls, was 500 feet in circumference and contained 36 cannons.  In 1869 worked stopped on the never completed fort.

Two tiers of vaulted casements for the cannons.

Inside the casements.

The vaulted brick ceiling is still holding up pretty well.

More pictures of our daytrip in Maine: