I'm back....Took a vacation from the blog but now I'm ready to rock and roll. We left Arizona on April 1st and made a couple of stops on the way home. We are now in Southport Maine. We are on Southport Island and about 5 miles from Booth Bay Harbor which is a quaint fishing village turned tourist town. We are in a small 40 site mom and pop campground which is what we like. We work with two other couples and the owners. We arrived on May 1st and spent the first two weeks getting ready to open on the 15th of May but are starting to settle into a routine and going out and exploring.
The weather here has been all over the place. One day of sunshine and three days of clouds and/or rain. I have only taken a couple of pictures of the park so far but I'll have some more next month. The big industry here is fishing and tourism and as you can tell by this picture, lobsters are a big part of it. Any place you go by the bays you can see hundreds of buoys out in the water. The fresh sea food and clam chowder have been great.
We went to the Maine Maritime Museum in the town of Bath. They have a beautiful building with some great displays. They cover everything from sailing ships and steamships up to the modern ships of today. It's built on the grounds of an old shipyard and they have restored some of the original buildings. They have a program where school kids come in every week and they work together to build a skiff. We had a chance to talk to one of the people that help them and see one of the boats they are working on. There are displays throughout the grounds and you can wander around on your own and take time to enjoy it all.
There are many great ship models throughout the museum and I loved all of the sailing ship models. The old sailing ships have always fascinated me. The shipyard that the museum is on built the largest six masted sailing vessel ever built. It was used to haul coal up and down the east coast. They had a mock up of an old tug boat pilot house that was fun to stand in and look out and think about what it must of been like to be a tug boat captain in the days of steam.
There is a pirate ship for the kids to play on and we found this gentleman out by the carpenter shop painting Mr. and Ms. Pirate for the pirate ship. As it turned out, he also carved them. It must be wonderful to have the talents some of these people have. I have a horrible time carving the Thanksgiving turkey.
They have a building just for the lobster industry. They have displays that show the evolution of the lobster traps and boats and the packaging and canning of the lobster. They even have videos that show you how to cook and eat lobster which was a very good thing as how one of my jobs at the camp ground is cooking lobster. We sell live lobsters to the guest and cook them if they like.
Here I am down by the river with the dry dock in the back ground for the Bath Iron Works. They build and repair many ships for the Navy here. They just finished the Navy's newest ship, the U.S.S. Zumwalt and just finished sea trials. It's still here and sure doesn't look anything like any navel ship I have ever seen.
Holly is feeding the birds again but we have more chipmunks and squirrels in it than birds I think. I didn't know they could climb right up a metal shepherds hook but I've watched them do it over and over and over.
If you haven't been following our travels since the beginning or haven't seen our first two posts, I'll tell you that we love lighthouses. Maine has a lot of lighthouses but a lot of them are on islands. We have been out geocaching and searching out lighthouses. This one is Cuckolds Light and is located right off the end of Southport Island where we are.
On the island right next to it is this house. This house belonged to Margaret Hamilton. You most likely know her better as the wicked witch of the west from the Wizard of Oz.
This is Rockland Breakwater Light. We had to walk out 7/8 of a mile over large granite blocks to get to it. It has been restored and is open to the public. Too bad that we found out that it is open on Saturday and Sundays and we were there on MONDAY. Well it was a nice day and we needed a walk of two miles by the time we walked from the parking lot and back.
We drove to Portland and wandered around the waterfront and had lunch on the bay. This is a picture of a section of about 30 feet of chain link fence that is covered with locks. All kinds, styles and sizes of locks. I don't know the story behind this but I think that the next trip down I'm going to find out what it is all about.
When we were in Portland we found two more lights. The top one is Portland Breakwater Light known as "bug light". the other one is Spring Point Ledge Light.
Well that's it for now. There will be more to come and more lighthouses and other cool things. Happy to be back and I'll leave a light on till next month. See you then.
