Thursday was Mer’s day again, and she had a busy little day planned. We started off by going back to Thomaston to go back over the various “Museum in the Streets” placards that we had missed. We got a brochure on the location of all the signs from the local town office, and we set off, starting on the far end of Route 1 and working our way back into town back toward the old prison site. When we made it back to the middle of town, we stopped at an excellent bakery to have a piece of cookie cake, and I had a hot chocolate. Thus fortified, we finished the tour, some of which was not easy. Sometimes signs were behind trees or on the corner of buildings, but to the best of our knowledge, we found them all.

The last signs were out by the old prison site where we had been on Tuesday. We crossed the street to look for a woods trail that was supposed to be there. We did find it, but it clearly has not been used too much – it is narrow and grown over. We tried to walk it, but gave up and returned after just a few minutes. There were several boggy sections that were muddy, and the bugs were out in force. We walked back to town and to the car, and drove on to the next destination.

Mer had never been to Friendship, Maine, before, so that was our next stop. Friendship is a tiny little fishing village that is known for one thing  – being the birthplace of the Friendship sloop. A sloop is a type of sailing vessel, and a boat builder in Friendship back before 1900 figured out how to build several boats per year (instead of the usual one boat per year), and that made his sloop more popular and affordable. We learned much of this from a very small but interesting museum in Friendship housed in the old one-room schoolhouse. It seems as if most of the one-room schoolhouses in Maine now house a local historical society. The lady staffing the place was very friendly, and when we were done with the museum, she told us how we could drive down to the ocean to see Friendship’s harbor.

Once we finished our Friendship tour, Mer had me drive to Union. Union is another town we had not seen before, other than to see from a nearby major road. Union is a very cute inland town, in the midst of hills and lakes. We drove over to the fairgrounds, to go see the Matthews Museum. The Matthews Museum is a large and eclectic collection of lots of objects. Most of them are farm-related or home-related, but the museum also had motors and old wind-up record players and horse-drawn buggies and sleighs, and more. We were both amazed at how large the place was. There is even a one-room schoolhouse still set up as it would have been when used up until the 1950s. The museum is named after the man who started it by donating his collection of stuff, which was large enough to start a museum. The museum even has one large room dedicated to the Maine soft drink of Moxie, including a wooden bottle of Moxie that is about thirty feet tall and used to be lived in as a bedroom for two children. It’s a strange place to browse, and interesting. We caught the museum on its opening day for the season, so we had the place more or less to ourselves, except for the three or four volunteers who were there setting up. We did not even come close to seeing everything in the two hours we spent there before they closed.

We went home and invited Carleton to supper, but he had already eaten. We headed over to Moody’s Diner in Waldoboro. We like Moody’s for their normal food, which is excellent (and they have the Maine tradition of calling shakes frappes, which is fun). The real treat of Moody’s, though, is that they have some of the best whoopie pies in the state. After we had supper, we grabbed four (including one for Carleton) and brought them home.

We had one more outing for the evening. We headed back to Thomaston to see their fireworks. The fireworks had been postponed for a night because of  fog, but this evening was fine, so we parked just outside of town at the Montpelier mansion, which is built on a hill. We tried to sit outside, but the bugs were bad, so we retreated to the car. To pass the time, I asked Mer questions from a game about books, and so we did not feel the wait too badly.

When the fireworks started, we tried another spot outside the car, but it too was buggy. We finally found that standing on the side of the road in front of our car was not too bad, so we did that for most of the show. We were lower down on the hill, so we did miss some of the lowest fireworks, which were obscured by the nearby trees. Still, we could see pretty well. The fireworks were mostly good, but the spacing and frequency was strange. I kept thinking the show was over because there would be pauses of thirty to forty-five seconds when there were no fireworks. There were at least three times when the show looked like a climax with many fireworks going off, and even after the finale and when we were getting back in the car, a few more isolated fireworks went off. It was a bit odd, but still a good show on the whole. We drove back to Rockland and to bed.

Friday was my day, and I had seen signs advertising a schooner race that started at the breakwater in Rockland. I had never seen a sailing race before, so I very much wanted to see it. Mer and I tromped out to the end of the almost-mile-long breakwater, all the while admiring the many boats sailing around the inside of the harbor. There were smaller ships with one mast, larger ships with two masts, and the Victory Chimes, a three-masted master-of-ceremonies ship. They were very pretty.

The start of the race was relaxed, and the ships set out based on class. As such, Mer and I were out on the breakwater for about an hour and a half. It was a pretty day, and there were a lot of people about, so it all felt very festive. As we were leaving, we could see a long line of sailing ships heading north toward Camden.

When we got back to the house, we invited Carleton to go over to the nearby Owl’s Head general store, to get their award-winning hamburgers. We got them to go, and took then over to the Owl’s Head lighthouse park, where we set up chairs and looked out over the ocean while a wonderful breeze blew in. It was a beautiful spot, and we took our time eating.

After lunch, we went back to the house, where Mer and I got our car and headed up to Camden. On Fridays in Camden, the library and the Chamber of Commerce offer free guided walking tours of Camden. We met the guide and his understudy at the library, and they took us around, just the two of us. We had a private walking tour! That was pretty great. We learned about Camden’s library, natural amphitheater, and seaside park and how they had been designed and cared for. The amphitheater is very close to obtaining a National Landmark designation. We took our time walking around, and after the seaside park we walked back up to the main street, where we learned about the woolen factories and grist mills that used to be on the river. The tour ended at the opera house, which is usually included in the tour, but was sadly closed by he time we got there. In all, the tour lasted about an hour and a half.

Mer and I took the recommendations of the tour guides and tried a new bakery in town, for a snack and a chance to get off of our feet. The place was very pleasant, and the baked goods we had were quite welcome. It seemed a fitting end to the tour of Camden.

Finally, in the evening, Mer and I walked to the far end of Rockland, to the Rockland Sail, Power, and Steam Museum. The museum looks very interesting and I hope to get back to it, but on this evening, we were there to hear a lecture on the maritime quest for a reliable way to calculate longitude. You can get latitude from sighting stars, but to calculate longitude, you need a reliable means of keeping track of time, either by a clock or by an astronomical means. It took a very long time to come up with a good clock that would work on board a ship, but a Yorkshireman named Harrison did it after over twenty years of trying. It was an interesting talk, and we got the bonus of having a pleasant evening walk back to the house.