Saturday was back to being Mer’s day, and she wanted to start the day locally. We drove the short distance to the Rockland Lighthouse Museum, where we started in the gift shop reading a children’s book about a Maine Coon cat who wanted a home and love. After we finished reading it, Mer went to the bathroom to clean up her face from her tears, and then we went into the museum itself.
The Lighthouse Museum is contained in two rooms: one normal-sized room where they show a video on lighthouses, and present displays with the history of the government agencies who had supervision of lighthouses, and one very large room that contains everything else. The larger room focuses on the life of lighthouse keepers (summary: it was difficult and lonely), and has many lenses from lighthouses. They have displays on the evolution of the technology of lights and fog bells/horns, and have an extensive display on the rescue services of the early-to-mid-twentieth century. We were able to do the entire museum in about two hours, and it was an interesting and well-done museum.
From the museum, we drove directly to Mer’s cousin’s house in Thomaston. Dana and her husband Dale were hosting the family Fourth of July picnic, albeit a few days late. There were about twenty people there, including friends of Dana and Dale, as well as family members that I knew. Dale had cooked up a ton of food on his grill, and so we grabbed chairs and ate too much while chatting with various folks. It was a pleasant day, in the shade, and we were there for over two hours before Mer announced we should move on to the the next destination.
We drove over to Damariscotta, another coastal town Mer had never been in, and we walked around the main street and down to the harbor. We strolled along one side street as well, where there were some very pretty seaside homes. Damariscotta is not too large, so we were only there for a fairly short time before we drove over to nearby Damariscotta Mills.
Damariscotta Mills has no downtown that I saw. What it does have is water. It has a freshwater lake, a very cool fish ladder made of stone, and a large lake/bay that connects to the ocean. I’m not sure how much of the large lake is fresh water and how much is salt water. We drove around for several minutes trying to find a parking space so we could get out to check out the fish ladder and the upper lake, and we finally settled on parking in a parking lot at the bottom of the fish ladder, even though there were not other cars there. It turned out the lot was owned by the city or the state, and was okay to park in; people just did not park there because it requires you to walk a ways to get to the lake.
We walked over to and along the fish ladder as best we could. Much of the ladder is on private property, so you can see it, but not get close to it. A fish ladder sounds dull, but this one is very pretty; it is made of stone, and twists back and forth as it comes down the hill. We got an excellent and close look at the top and bottom, and could see most of it from the road that led to the upper lake.
The upper lake had a swimming hole, and it was popular, from the looks of things. It had a bridge to jump from, and lots of trees for shade. In good Maine tradition, there was no real beach – just rocks and some patches of lawn, but it was still a good spot for swimming. Mer had a schedule in mind, so we did not linger long at the lake, and returned to the car by the way we had come. As we approached the very bottom of the fish ladder, there was a huge splash from the stream next to us and something huge caught my eye. I was startled, to say the least, and just made out the tail of a seal as he swam into the larger lake. Mer was sad she missed him, but she did get to see his head poke up in the lake as we drove away. I’m sad we did not see him as we came down the path, but I was not exactly looking for wildlife that close to a parking lot.
We headed over to the coastal town of Port Clyde, where Mer had arranged for us to have a sunset cruise on the Monhegan mail-run boat. The boat is used to ferry mail and passengers to Monhegan Island, but they also do pleasure cruises. The sunset cruise also promised to try to see puffins, a surprisingly small seabird that nests near Port Clyde.
The boat was a good-sized wooden boat that dated back to World War 2. It had some function in the Philippines, but I forget exactly what its role was. Mer and I got to sit in the prow, so we had a great view. There was only the crew (three people) and one other couple on board, and the other (very young) couple seemed to know the crew, so we were pretty much the focus of the crew and the on-board commentary. It was pretty much a private crew. I’m sure the crew lost money on us, but we had a great time, and they were very friendly the entire trip.
The cruise lasted a little over two hours, and it was lovely. The sun was warm, but the sea air was cool, so I was comfortable, although Mer had to put on a jacket once the sun went down. We saw several small islands where fairly rich people had built homes, including the Wyeth family of painting fame. The focus of the trip, aside from the sunset (which was spectacular), was wildlife. We went out to a nesting island for many seabirds, and circled it several times. We did get to see puffins, as well as gulls and cormorants, and a small rock island filled with seals. On the way back from the island, we saw two porpoises. We were also passed by a party boat full of people, some of whom took the time to moon us, which was amusing since the captain of our boat called it before the boat came near us. We did get to see two lighthouses, and the crew had hoped we would see a couple of eagles, but they did not make an appearance for us.
It was a peaceful and lovely ride. The sunset was amazing, and as an added bonus, we saw a few distant fireworks from shore. If anyone ever gets to the coastal area of Maine, I can heartily recommend the Monhegan boat line cruises.