Tuesday was “my” day, and I started the day by myself. I went to Augusta to run along the paved Rail Trail, a trail that runs next to a railroad track from Augusta to Gardiner for about 6.5 miles. I ran out-and-back, for a 12.7-mile run. It was a tough run – very humid, and the trail actually had some fair grades along the way, especially out from Hallowell. I was pretty beat by the time I finished, and I was pretty close to throwing up for a few minutes (probably from dehydration, even though I ran with water).

I went back home and showered and got ready, and then with Mer, we headed back, once again, to Augusta. I wanted to tour the State House. We just beat a quick-moving but intense storm, and got inside the State House just before the rain started. We had to wait about twenty minutes for the last tour of the day to start (I was rather lucky with that timing). It was a good-sized group of about fifteen people. Our guide was a native Mainer who grew up in Lewiston. He was very friendly, had a good sense of humor, and he knew a lot about the State House. It was interesting. Some things I learned:
– We have a citizen legislature, meaning all the lawmakers have other jobs or are retired.
– The legislature is elected every two years, both houses.
– In a two-year term, the legislature meets from January to June, and then January to April.
– The State House was expanded to about twice the original size around 1911.
Since the legislature was not in session, we got to go in both houses. We also got to go out on the magnificent porch on the third floor, overlooking Capitol Park.

After the State House tour, I drove us to a bowling alley, only to discover it was not candlepin bowling, the Maine version of bowling where you use smaller balls and pins. I had never been in an alley in Maine that did not have any candlepin, and it had never even occurred to me to call ahead and ask. We turned around and left.

By now, I was hungry, so we drove to next door Hallowell to find a place to eat. We found a great little brewery called The Liberal Cup. The food was excellent, and the atmosphere was nice – lots of nooks, lots of wood, and pretty quiet.

To show Mer a little of the trail I had run, we went back to Augusta’s Rail Trail and walked out about half a mile. We found a little path in the woods that ran to an overlook on the Kennebec river, which was pretty. We did not stay too long on the main trail since it was fairly hot, but we did get a good look around.

On the way home, I swung by Tubby’s ice cream stand in Wayne. We got ice cream, and then ate it in the car as it rained a little. By the time we finished, so had the rain, so we wandered around the Wayne dam swimming hole, which is where Shannon and I used to swim in high school and college. It had changed some because of some severe flooding about ten years ago, and the dam had to be partly rebuilt, but it is still more or less the same and still a great swimming hole. Since I had seen Mer’s swimming hole the week before, it only seemed fair to show her mine, especially since mine was now next to an ice cream stand.

Between the dam and home, I stopped at a farm stand and picked up some corn. Maine corn is really sweet and good, so I wanted to have some at least once before I left. We ate it for supper along with some very good pizza Dad picked up.

After supper, I played Mer at the word game Snatch It. I was competitive, but not too surprisingly, I lost by the score of 33-25 or something like that.

Monday was Mer’s day again. We started the day by driving to Augusta and going to AHOP (Augusta House of Pancakes). We both ordered breakfast, even though it was about 11:00. AHOP has great hot chocolate, and we both got enormous amounts of food.

After breakfast, we headed to the Maine Veterans’ Cemetery. It is the “middle” cemetery of Augusta’s three veterans’ cemeteries – there is a really old one, and then the Maine Veterans’ Cemetery that was in operation from about 1970 to about 2000, and then a newer one. The Maine Veterans’ Cemetery is still active even though it is full – all the spaces left are reserved, but the cemetery still averages three burials per day.

The cemetery is a lovely place to walk – well groomed and well kept. Some of the building architecture is unfortunately very “look, concrete!” 1970, but it is still a pleasant place. Mer, being the English teacher she is, found a misspelled word carved in granite within about ten minutes. All of the gravestones are flat for ease of mowing and for aesthetic appeal, but there are some memorials that are above ground.

We bumped into a very friendly groundskeeper, who was probably about thirty. We chatted for about twenty minutes, talking about how graves are dug (by backhoe), and about how he called the police on some kids partying on the grounds, and about a little history of the cemetery. It was interesting. I like to know how things work, and this was a good chance to find out how a cemetery works.

We then continued with our walking tour by driving over to the Viles Arboretum, which is just outside Augusta. The Arboretum is still fairly new (about twenty years old), so some of the trees on the grounds are still growing to maturity. It has two major trails – an inner loop and an outer loop. Mer wanted to do the inner loop, which had more shade (the day was hot). It took about forty-five minutes to walk the entire thing. We saw a rock-based garden, lots of hostas in bloom, a small pond, the ruins of an old pig barn, a grove of pine trees whose seeds had been flown on a space shuttle mission, and lots of trees. They have a good-sized grove of lilacs, but those had passed bloom for this year. It was a mellow walk.

Mer continued the outdoor theme by having us drive to the remote-feeling Jamies Pond near Hallowell. The pond is a state park, so there are no buildings on the water, and it is a decent-sized body of water. We walked along a trail we found, uphill to a stream, but then the trail ended. We sat on a rock and watched the water run by for a few minutes, but then we had to go since Mer had time-specific plans.

We finished the day driving up to Waterville to the Railroad Square Cinema, which shows art films. Mer wanted to see the film Buck, which is the story of a horse trainer who uses gentle methods to “break” horses, with some remarkable results. The film follows Buck around for a few months, and tells his story, along with the story of his family, and some of the people and horses he comes in contact with. It was a very good film.

We got back home about 7:30, where Dad was good enough to make supper again.

Sunday was Mer’s day again, and she had an interesting take. Since it was Sunday, she figured many things would be closed, and she also wanted to be mellow. So, she decided we should visit several towns and just wander in them.

We started by heading back toward Augusta, and we stopped in the small town of Winthrop. We were both surprised to see a large building housing Tubby’s Ice Cream, which we thought was only a small ice cream stand in Wayne near my Dad’s place. We parked the car just past Tubby’s, and we wandered down main street and looked around the town. For the return trip, Mer wanted to walk back roads toward the large lake that is next to Winthrop, so we did that and found ourselves at a small beach. We sat on a bench and watched people swimming, and we watched the lake, too. After a time, we went back to the car via back roads, and continued to head toward Augusta.

But not for long. Mer had me swing onto a side road that I had never been down before. It was supposed to be a scenic route to Augusta, but we must have turned the wrong way because we ended up being near Monmouth. That suited Mer fine since she wanted to go there to tour the theater building which houses some offices and a library. Sadly, the building was closed for Sunday, so we wandered around in the cemetery next door. The cemetery held up our observations from Maine cemeteries, that you die before forty or after eighty – there do not seem to be many sixty-year-olds dying in Maine.

After Monmouth, we went to Gardiner, which is next to Augusta. The downtown is very pretty, with cute shops and eateries, but they were mostly closed. We still enjoyed wandering the town, and we found our way to the boardwalk that runs along the river (the Kennebec). We walked along the boardwalk, which is probably normally pleasant, but this was one of two hot days we had in Maine, and the boardwalk was radiating heat back up at us. It was a pretty view, though. At the end of the boardwalk was a trail through the woods. We walked along this in the shade, and the trail went about a mile into the woods before it looped around on itself in a pretty little garden area.

After Gardiner, we went to another next-to-Augusta town, Hallowell. Hallowell is really small, but pretty. We found an open bakery and got whoopie pies. Sadly, they were just okay – they were very mild (not sweet), but we needed the rest and a little food, so it was not a wasted stop. We walked down by the river a little here as well, but the riverfront was small.

Finally, we went into Augusta and found Capitol Park, which is right across from the Capitol. It is a good-sized park, with lots of trees, and we wandered all around it. We saw an impressive sculpture that commemorated the veterans of Vietnam. We also found a very small graveyard that held just four or five Maine politicians who seemed to have died in office in the 1840s. Capitol Park is not Lincoln Park in Chicago, but it is still a good use of green space in Augusta.

We went back to Dad’s for supper, and then headed back to Monmouth to see King Lear. Lear is Mer’s favorite play, so we were pretty excited to see it. It was a good production. Many of the actors were the same actors who had been in Much Ado the night before, and that is always fascinating to see – how one actor is the bad guy one night and the good guy the next. The actor playing Lear was excellent, as was the actress playing his eldest daughter, Goneril. They both had great voices and presence on stage. Lear’s middle daughter, Regan, was not so strong, and I’m not sure if it was her choices or the director’s. She was crying early in a scene and then ice cold later in the same scene. I’m not convinced the actress knew who she was supposed to be, so much of the performance came out flat. The rest of the cast was very solid, although Mer wanted to see the blinded Gloucester express more sorrow and repentance for his foolishness at doubting his good son and trusting his evil son.

The director made some great choices and some really poor ones. He had Lear’s fool come back on the stage in a flashback late in the play (the Fool was dead at that point) that has Lear remember some of the Fool’s accusations against Lear’s conduct. It was very effective. The director had Lear curse Goneril with sterility, and  actually had Lear touching her stomach as he cursed her – it was chilling.

Then, oddly, the director made some astonishingly bad choices. He cast a woman in the role of Oswald, who is a cowardly steward to Goneril. I have no problem with gender-changing unless it messes with the plot, and this did. Oswald is a cowardly man and a braggart who wants to kill a blind old man because he thinks he can do it safely. Lear’s trusted servant, Kent, draws a sword on Oswald when Oswald insults Lear. For Kent to draw a sword on a woman in twelfth-century Britain is ridiculous, and even to my modern eyes made Kent out to be a bully. When the female Oswald wants to kill the blind Gloucester, instead of being a completely cowardly act, it comes across as the only way a small woman could kill a large man. Then, when Gloucester’s good son attacks Oswald to defend Gloucester, the ensuing difficult fight was unconvincing, since a trained nobleman would not have had much trouble with a woman who weighed about a hundred pounds.

The really jaw-dropping moment, though, was the ending. Normally, Lear mourns the passing of his good daughter. In this production, the bodies of the two older sisters are laid out on stage also. That was fine – it showed that Lear had lost everything. But one of the most moving lines in the play is meant for Cordelia, when Lear says she will come no more – “never, never, never, never, never.” The director had Lear kiss each of his daughters and say “never” over each one, saving the last three for Cordelia. Yes, it could show Lear forgiving his older daughters, but to me it undermined the forgiveness, love, and sacrifice of Cordelia. Lear’s older daughters were monstrous to him, and it did not make sense to me that he would forgive them when all of his concern to this point in the last scene has been for Cordelia. In the director’s defense, the text allows for what he staged (all the nouns in Lear’s last speech are generic), but it simply did not work for me.

Still, that is being a bit nit-picky. The overall production was very good, and the minimalist scenery (four birch trees and an abstract silver-and-black background) worked really well.

After the show, there was a talk-back with the director and actors. I love talk-backs, but I am beginning to dread the talks after academic plays. They seem to bring out the worst in clueless social behavior in professors and educated people. In this case, one professor talked AT the actors repeatedly, never asking any questions, and even answering some questions meant for the cast. At one point, he even plugged a book he had written. It was discouraging that he missed the opportunity to learn from the cast, or to at least let other people ask questions. I did get to ask if the minimalist staging was inspired by the repetition throughout Lear of the word “nothing.” The director said that was part of it, but that some of it was of practical reasons – there was not really anywhere to put scenery backstage.

Of the two plays we saw, I thought Much Ado was the stronger play, but that Lear was still worth seeing.

Saturday was a transition day. It was the day we were to leave the Rockland contingent of the family and the day we were to drive to East Livermore to Dad and Kellee’s house. We were in no great rush, so while Mer visited with her family, I looked at Dale’s printer. He had not been able to print, and I found out that it was because he had left the power cable at home. It was a special non-standard cable that I guessed was going to cost twenty or thirty dollars to get and not be easy to find. I recommended buying a new printer instead and leaving it in Maine. To that end, I want out to Office Max in town. They were not open yet, so I drove down to the breakwater and walked along it for a few minutes before heading back to the now-open store. I was looking at cheap inkjet printers, but I came across a sale on a twenty-four-page-per-minute Brother laser printer for really cheap. I could not pass that up, so I bought it. The salesman warned me that the printer did not come with a USB cable to hook to the computer, but I had seen that Dale had two in his computer bag, so that did not worry me.

I got back home, unpacked the printer, and powered it up. I hooked up Dale’s computer, and it “saw” the printer and started to load the software. It then had an error. I tried a bunch of things, and after a long and frustrating hour, I tried Dale’s other USB cable, just out of desperation. The computer saw the printer and loaded it just fine. That was kind of how my summer with computers had been going.

We then packed up the car, took our leave and then Route 17 to Augusta. Once in Augusta, I decided to try to find the Maine State Library, which I actually managed to find after a little hunting. I wanted to see if the archives had the old newspapers from the late 80s so that I could look up my old cross country race times. The library had the Lewiston Sun papers on microfilm, so I spent about forty-five minutes looking through old newspapers while Mer read. Although I seem to remember seeing race results in the paper, I found very few of them, and those tended to be large races where only the top twenty spots were reported. So, sadly, I gave up without finding too much more than a few stories of old friends who played football.

We got to Dad’s in the mid-afternoon, and we sat and talked out on the back porch. Dad made some burgers for supper. The, in a surprise to me, Mer announced she wanted to take me to the Theater at Monmouth. I had heard of it before, vaguely, but I was game to go. It turns out the theater is only about twenty minutes from Dad’s house, and is located in a wonderfully strange building with bright colors and turrets. It is also home to a professional theater group that this night was doing Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing.

I was fairly astonished that there was a classical professional theater so close to my house, and that I had never been. I was eager to see how it was. It turned out to be excellent. Much Ado is a fun play, and the leads were very strong. In one scene, the male lead “accidentally” overhears how the lead female is supposed to be in love with him, and it was great fun watching him “hide” behind a bush, under a bench, in the audience, etc. The set was basic – just a backdrop of a terrace, and on the stage were a few benches and shrubs. It was a very well-done production. They were doing several plays in repertoire, one of which was King Lear. Mer indicated that we would be returning the next night to see that play.

We got back to Dad and Kellee’s around 11:00, and the stars were out and were amazing. We stood in the driveway and just started. You could even see the Milky Way. I forget how much light pollution we have, even when we don’t live in a major city like Chicago. It was great to see the stars so clearly.

Friday was the last of “my” days in Rockland, so I wanted to hit some more coastal sights. I started the day off going south, to Wiscasset. I had found a description of an intriguing-sounding museum that I wanted to take Mer to see. It is on a back street of Wiscasset, and is housed in an old, huge house that used to belong to a sea captain. The museum is called the Musical Wonder House, and it is the largest collection of music boxes in one place in the United States. I like music boxes, and Mer has been fascinated by them for years. So, it seemed like a good destination.

I had no idea how elaborate music boxes were in the late 1800s. There were huge, well-finished wooden boxes that could play multiple tunes and even had interchangeable cartridges. Some cartridges had over ten thousand dots on them to pluck the musical tines. Some had such full sound that you could feel the bass notes through your feet. Some music boxes had bells and percussion in addition to the tines, and one Russian box even had a small pipe organ in it, the sound of which you could add or take away as you saw fit.

There were round record-like cylinders that were made of metal and played as records would later play. There were music boxes used to elaborately serve up after-dinner drinks or cigarettes. There were artificial birds that sang and moved, and seascapes where the boats bobbed up and down. They even had two player pianos with “recordings” of Gershwin and Rachmaninoff that the composers had played themselves. It was fascinating. The entire tour, led by a quiet ex-teacher, took over an hour.

I could have spent a fortune in the gift shop – the music boxes were beautiful. I did manage to get away with a CD of some of the music boxes playing various hymns.

On a whim, we wandered up the street to Castle Tucker, a slightly misleading name for an older mansion that was open for tours. We took the tour, and it was very enjoyable. It was just Mer and I and the tour guide. The house is very pretty, but what was fascinating to me is that most of the furniture was from the 1800s – the house had passed down through the family, and the last woman to own the house changed very little. She donated the house to a trust, but she is still alive in a nursing home. It is astonishing that no one threw out the “old fashioned” furniture over the years. It was a very worthwhile tour, especially for five dollars each.

We drove out of Wiscasset, and on another whim, I took the road to Fort Edgecomb. The fort overlooks the river, and is a wooden blockhouse which is a (restored) original. There are not many left. As Mer liked to point out, lighthouses and forts tend to be in very scenic areas, so not only was the blockhouse interesting, but the grounds were pretty was well.

On yet another whim, I followed signs to Pemaquid Point. It took a fair amount of time to get there, but I figured anywhere with the word “Point” in the name that was close to the ocean was likely to be pretty. I was not wrong. The road really does end in the point of land, at the Pemaquid Point lighthouse, which turns out to be the lighthouse seen on the back of the “Maine” quarter. The keeper’s house now holds an eclectic small museum that focuses on fishing. We toured that, but it only takes a few minutes. The real sights are the lighthouse and the grounds. The lighthouse was open, so after a short wait we were able to climb up into it. We could see all around the point, and it is breathtaking.

The grounds are all granite rocks, and they fall jaggedly to the sea. The waves hit the rocks in multiple directions, which create cool waves (and, according to the warning signs, very dangerous undertows). We walked around the grounds and looked at the outbuildings (an old bell tower for foggy days, and the old lamp oil storage shed), but mostly we just sat on the rock and watched the ocean. What an amazing place.

On the way out from the Point, we swung by Fort William Henry, which is the ruins of an old fort with one reconstructed tower. The fort at one time had been the northern extreme of British holdings against the French, and so the fort had been built up and destroyed two or three times. We read about the history of the fort, and climbed the tower, which overlooks Pemaquid Beach. It is hard to think that the beach is only a mile or two from the rocks of the point. At the beach, the water was calm, and the beach was sandy.

We took a very scenic drive back home, with my intention to eat in Waldoboro (for no great reason other than whim). It turns out that Waldoboro is a dinky little town, and we did not see anywhere to eat. We moved on to Thomaston, to the Thomaston Cafe, which was open. It turns out their supper menu is on the fancy side, with entrees from about twenty dollars and up. We moved on again, landing back in Rockland and eating at the Park Street Grille, which specializes in southwestern-influenced food. We did also pick up another set of whoopie pies and a cookie from the Rockland Cafe for dessert at home.

On Thursday, it was “my” day still, so I took advantage of an offer that Carleton had made to me. He had indicated that if we wished to climb Mt. Battie in Camden, he would be happy to drop us off at the trail at the base of the climb, and he would drive to the top and wait for us. I like the Mt. Battie climb, so I told Carleton that I would be happy if he could help us in such a way.

Carleton drove us in his car, and after a brief bathroom stop at the public landing in Camden, we were dropped off at the trail head. There were a couple of other cars in the small parking lot, and this was borne out when we met two different parties of people climbing down the mountain while we climbed up. This caused Mer to remind me that we (including when she was growing up) had never had to climb down Mt. Battie. We have always met someone at the top, which is happy since I think going up is easier than going down.

The climb up Mt. Battie is surprisingly difficult in places. There are several steep parts, and two areas of bare bedrock that you have to scrabble over. Mer did pretty well – she only required a boost in a couple of places, and was only surly (because she was scared) once, on a difficult bedrock stretch. When I mentioned the spectacular views, her response as she concentrated on climbing was, “Bully!” It was rather amusing.

We made it to the top in about forty-five minutes. We stopped at several places along the way to admire the sweeping views of the ocean and nearby islands. It is a pretty climb, and the day was fairly clear with just a hint of haze in the distance.

Carleton met us at the top, and lent us his binoculars with which to look around. There is a fire watch tower at the top, and we all climbed it to see better (including Carleton, who is eighty-nine – he is my hero!). We enjoyed the panoramic views, which now included the mountains behind Mt. Battie. We spent about thirty to forty-five minutes on the top.

Carleton took us the scenic way home, through Rockport, along the sea the whole way. It is a very pretty drive. The Rockland-Rockport-Camden stretch of coast is one of my favorite places to visit.

We got back home, and Mer and I headed out, to go back to the Samoset Resort. I wanted to eat lunch on their patio and look at the ocean. We had some excellent Italian food, and the views were beautiful and relaxing. We almost had the deck to ourselves (there was one other couple); it appears the weekday lunch crowd is small. I was especially happy at the bill – it was under twenty dollars for our meals, with tip, and the ambiance is hard to beat. I recommend the lunch at the Samoset if you can get good weather.

Later in the afternoon (I think it was about 4:00), we walked over to the docks in Rockland. I had reserved space for us on the fifty-five-foot ketch sailing boat Morning in Maine. We had some amusing delays as I lost Mer in plain sight while she waited on a nearby bench, and then I had to run to a bank since the boat only took cash. We still made it on board, and the ship even left a tad early.

It was a two-hour cruise, mostly under sail (we used a motor to get away from the dock and nearby boats). The captain described the day as a 9.5 out of 10 – a good breeze of about ten mph, lots of sun, cool temperatures, and fairly calm seas. We sailed across the bay past Owls Head and out into open ocean. We got to see the Owls Head lighthouse and, on the way back, the Rockland breakwater light. We even got to see a couple of nesting ospreys in the harbor. There were about twenty people on board in all, and my only disappointment was that I did not get to pilot the ship. The captain made the offer, and it was taken by all the kids on board, but left no time for adult children. Next time. It was a great sail, and the only time I had been on the ocean while not on a ferry (I have been on the Rockland and Vancouver ferries).

We did swing by the Rockland Cafe on the way home to pick up some whoopie pies for dessert. Mt. Battie, the Samoset, the ocean, and whoopie pies – a pretty great Maine day.

Wednesday was the first of “my” days in Maine, so I was in charge (or chadge). We slept in, but once we were underway, I drove us down to Boothbay, to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.

Mer and I have become big fans of botanical gardens. They have tons of pretty flowers and lots of places to walk, and they are all slightly different. The Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens are fairly new, having only opened in 2007. They have done a spectacular job. They kept and used the exposed bedrock in the gardens, and they have lots of pine and other fir trees around the grounds mixed in with the flowers. They have an extensive and fun children’s area that is beautifully planted, and they have several major gardens, including a rose garden and a rhododendron garden. Finally, there are three major trails that go through the gardens and the woods. Some of the trails lead down to the tidal river, so you even get a water aspect to the gardens. Between the fir trees, the water, and the bedrock, it is a good representation of Maine. Mer and I spent about four hours there, and we saw the entire gardens with the exception of a few small connector trails. I really liked the children’s area since it was whimsical, and I liked the rhododendron garden for the large artificial waterfall located there.

After the garden, we drove the short distance to Boothbay Harbor, which I had heard much about. We only stayed about forty-five minutes. I was largely unimpressed. There is no well-defined main street like in Rockland or Camden. The shops felt very touristy, and the streets were crowded, and parking was hard. You could not see the harbor from much of the town because the streets were all built up. We wandered into a candy store and bought two really expensive chocolate-covered Oreos, which we ate near the harbor, and then we left town. I’ll take Rockland or Camden any day.

We swung back through Rockland and picked up Dale and Carlene to go out to supper. Our first pick, the Thomaston Cafe, was closed, so we drove up to Camden and ate at the Village Restaurant, which has windows that overlook the bay. The food was excellent and the views were fabulous. We had had a very pretty day.

On Tuesday, I actually set an alarm for 4:30 am, much to Mer’s enjoyment. The sun comes up early in Maine, and I wanted to take full advantage of cool temperatures to get in a long run. I was out the door at about 5:00 for a 12-plus-mile run out to Owl’s Head lighthouse and back. It was a cool morning, but somewhat humid. That was okay, but what turned out to be difficult is that there were three major hills on the road to Owl’s Head, and a bunch of minor ones. I made the full run and was back before 7:00, but I was a tired boy.

Once we got underway later with the official touring day, we started out heading down Route 17, but turned back after a few miles. It had started to sprinkle, and Mer had been planning a hike in the woods, but did not want to get stuck in the woods in the rain. So, she went to Plan B.

We drove over to Thomaston, to a mansion called Montpelier , which is a recreation of the home of the Revolutionary War’s General Knox. He moved to Maine after he retired from government and built a large mansion. The mansion passed down through the family, but they could not afford to keep it up, so the original was torn down in 1871, less than a hundred years after it was built. The Daughters of the American Revolution felt that something should be done as a memorial for General Knox, so they spearheaded the effort to rebuild Montpelier on a nearby site. About a century old, the rebuilt house still exists, so that is what we toured.

The house is furnished with furniture from the time, although most of it is not original since the family furniture had all been sold off. Our guide was an older man who was a retired theater teacher, and it showed. He was affable and had a wry sense of humor that I liked very much. The tour was supposed to go about forty-five minutes, but went more like one hour and fifteen minutes. We learned lots of fun facts along the way, but the one that jumped out to both of us was that General Knox was a little over six feet tall and three hundred pounds, and Mrs. Knox was about five feet tall and about three hundred pounds. They appear to have lived well.

After touring the house, we went back to Rockland and then went to have lunch at the Brown Bag restaurant. Sadly, it was a bit of a botched outing. The food took over an hour to get (keep in mind that most things were soups or sandwiches), and three of the five orders had something wrong. It was weird, but Carleton thought about it and placed the blame (probably rightly) on the just-installed computer system. At any rate, I hope things smooth out for the Brown Bag.

In the afternoon, Mer and I headed out to the Olson house, which was made famous by the artist Andrew Wyeth. It is the farmhouse seen in the background of the painting Christina’s World. Wyeth actually painted a lot of paintings inspired by the house, so happily the house was given to the Rockland-based Farnsworth Museum about twenty years ago, so the house is now part of the museum. We toured the house, which has several replicas of paintings in the house showing the view that Wyeth was looking at as he painted it. Our guide told us how Wyeth became acquainted with the Olsons through his future wife, and how he became a very close family friend. We found out that the Christina of the famous painting was actually an amalgam of several women since Christina was at the time fifty-five years old. Wyeth also took some liberties with the view of the farm buildings as well, but Christina approved of the paining very much.

After the tour, we wandered the field that Christina was painted in, and we visited the cemetery located at the far end of the field. Christina and her brother are both buried there (they died in the 1960s), and Wyeth is buried there as well (he died in 2009). It was an interesting day to tour the two houses and contrast the opulent living of the one with the simple and somewhat difficult living of the other.

To round out the day, we headed over to the Owl’s Head General Store with Dale to get supper; the store serves excellent hamburgers. We dropped Dale off at home and went and got dessert at Dorman’s ice cream stand. The servings are huge there – I need to remember to get a small next time.

Monday was Mer’s first full day of being in charge of touring. We headed out of Rockland on Route 17, and made a quick stop-off at one of Mer’s childhood swimming holes. It was on the southern end of Lake Chickawaukee, and is a small beach and a floating dock. There are bathrooms and a changing room, and it is a nice little swimming area. It was pretty crowded on Monday morning with about twenty “tweens” swimming and splashing around.

After the short stop at the beach, we drove out to Union and parked in a gravel parking lot in a field next to the St. Georges River. Mer had found information on a two-mile trail-walk along an old canal. The canal site is supposed to be the oldest canal in the U.S., and the subsequent canals built in the area never made any money and fell quickly into disuse. The trail was fairly easy, with a few tricky spots, and we only met two people walking their dogs along the entire out-and-back trail. Much of the trail had a view of the small river, and it was all in woods. The woods is owned by a sawmill, and they let people use the path, which is very good of them. The brochure Mer picked up does read a little bit like pro-sawmill propaganda in places, but that was amusing. The walk was very pretty, and quiet, and smelled of pine and other fir trees. It was a great (and easy) walk that was very relaxing.

Even the drive out to and back from the walk was gorgeous. We had to take a detour because of road repair, and the detour took us to the top of a hill overlooking a farm field that went down to a lake, and the lake was framed by small mountains. Not too shabby.

We then headed back to the coast and went south along Route 1. We stopped in Port Clyde, a small seaside town that seemed to be full of art galleries and restaurants. We ate on the dock at the Dip Net restaurant. The food was good, and the views were wonderful. I like looking at the ocean and seeing boats coming and going. Mer pretty much had some form of seafood all week long, usually in the form of chowder. I pretty  much did not.

After lunch, we headed over to the Marshall Point Lighthouse and the small museum that now occupies the old lighthouse keeper’s home. The Marshall Point lighthouse is very pretty (most lighthouses are situated in rather dramatic settings), and is most famous for being the lighthouse that Forrest Gump runs up to in the movie of the same name. The museum is small, and wonderfully eclectic, with lighthouse memorabilia, boat models, stories of the lighthouse keepers, and more. We toured the entire museum and then wandered the grounds.

We ended the touristy day by going over to the nearby, and very small, Drift Inn Beach. The beach was sandy and nice, but was probably only about three hundred feet wide, and I’m guessing it almost disappears at high tide. We sat on the beach and had an amusing time watching some kids (and a mom) paddling around on Florida-style kayaks, which are huge surfboards meant to be paddled from a kneeling or standing-up position.

We got back to the house about 6:30, and I went up to my room and fell asleep by 7:00. Touring can take it out of a guy! 

We made it to Rockland, Maine, around 8:00 pm on Saturday. We had an uneventful drive, and had eaten at Moody’s diner in Waldoboro on the way to Rockland. Mer’s grandfather lives in Rockland, and her parents stay there in a small apartment in the back of the house during summers. Since my dad and stepmom also live in Maine, we get a lot of relative visiting done when we come to Maine.

New to us this time was that we had decided to actively act as tourists while in Maine. We did not want to ignore our families, but we wanted to see some of the cool and pretty things Maine has to offer. So, we decided that during the days we would play tourist, and in the evenings we would visit with family.

Sunday started with church, which happily started at 10:30, so Mer and I were able to sleep in some. Carleton, Mer’s grandfather, has gone to the First Baptist Church of Rockland for his whole life (and he is now eighty-nine), so I am happy we are able to go with him when we visit.

After church, Carleton hosted brunch at the Samoset Resort, which is something he tries to do when we come to town. Both of Carleton’s children (Mer’s mom and uncle) and two of his three grandchildren were able to make it, so it was a fairly good-sized gathering (I think it was eleven people). The restaurant at the Samoset looks out over the ocean, and the food is amazing and plentiful. We had a very good time and ate too much.

Sunday was Mer’s day – she was in charge of the first three days in Rockland. So, we jumped in the car and headed over to the nearby town of Owl’s Head, to the Owl’s Head lighthouse. We had been to the lighthouse before, but it is pretty and worth going back to, and as a newly available (just in the last year) opportunity, the lighthouse is open on weekends for visitors to go up into. We both wanted to take advantage of that. The lighthouse is only about one hundred feet above the water, and it was hot and cramped, but the views are pretty great, and we were able to see the lens and the light of the tower up close. It was pretty great. After we clambered around the lighthouse, we walked the short distance to the beach. The Owl’s Head beach is a good Maine beach – mostly rocks instead of sand. We dipped our feet in the water and enjoyed the afternoon.

Mer then took me over to the nearby Birch Point State Park, where they have a real sand beach, which was relatively crowded (but, being small-town Maine, it was not packed). This was a great beach for walking in the surf, and was framed on either end by granite rocks which you could climb on, which we did. We got out to a point of rock, and just sat and watched the ocean and the boats for awhile.

We headed back to Rockland, and went to evening church, although we came into the service a few minutes late. We joined Carleton and enjoyed singing several hymns (our home church does not do many hymns any more). Mer’s mom, Carlene, was not feeling good, so she and Dale stayed home.

After church, Mer still had another outing in mind – we went to the Rockland breakwater and walked out to the lighthouse on the end of it. The breakwater is massive, about a mile long and made of thousands of granite blocks; it took twelve years to build, finishing around 1900. The breakwater is one of our favorite places to visit, and frames the harbor with Owl’s Head Light directly across the bay, so our getting to both lighthouses made for a symmetrical day.

Back at the house, Mer visited with her parents, and Carleton and I chatted in the living room. We talked about a bunch of things, including how Carleton met his wife (who passed away two years ago), and we talked a long time about his service in the Pacific back in World War Two. Mer joined us for part of the talk, and we talked on until about midnight. It was a fascinating talk. A few highlights:

– Carleton met Leona at a church gathering at her church after he had been invited by a friend.
– On an early date, they went on a fair ride which went backwards, which made Carleton ill (including throwing up after the ride), but the relationship still panned out.
– Carleton was drafted with about five hundred other young men, but he and seven others (based on high IQ scores) were sent to a different school where he could have become an officer in the artillery. However, Carleton had not taken geometry in high school, and opted out of taking it through the army, so he became an enlisted man in the artillery.
– He ended up becoming a clerk in the headquarters battery (field HQ), taking care of records and payroll and the like.
– He spent two and a half years in the field without ever going home. He never saw his daughter (Mer’s mom) until she was about two.
– He slept in a hammock over a foxhole, so he could jump right into it during bombing raids.
– Most of his service was in New Guinea, with some in the Philippines.
– He was nicknamed “GI” because he followed the regulation book so closely on health matters, and he never got malaria or jungle rot.
– Late in the war, he identified a single Japanese plane coming in by the sound of its engine, and encouraged the men around him to jump in a trash pit with him. The plane bombed the ammunition depot about three hundred yards away, which exploded.
– Men were mustered out based on a point system, and Carleton missed the cut by one point (seventy-nine out of eighty), so he thought he was going to Japan with the occupational forces, but there was a second round before he went, so he was able to go home.

As I said, a really great conversation.