Friday was forecast to be rainy all day, and so I had planned a mellow at-home day of games and movies. So, when the forecast suddenly improved, I was left scrambling to figure out tourist things to do. I came up with a couple of ideas of things in Portland.

Meredith always likes to get out on water when we are in places where that is an option, and I was tired from several long days of lots of walking and hiking. So, when we can get a boat tour, we can sit AND see things, something we call butt-sitting tourism. I found an hour-and-forty-five-minute harbor tour of Portland harbor, covering several lighthouses and forts, as well as some of the harbor islands. We drove down and had the usual slightly difficult and expensive time finding parking in Portland’s Old Port, but we managed. And so we had a good time on board the tour boat.

In addition to the lighthouses (including the famous-for-Maine Portland Head Light) and forts, we did see beautiful homes, both on the mainland and on islands. We got to see a couple of islands that are now city parks that you can get to via boat or causeway, and we saw sea birds and a few seals. The weather held, although it was cloudy for the last half of the tour, and many people retreated out of the wind on the deck, going into the cabin below. We stayed on the deck for the better views.

After the tour, we fueled up on some snack food and toured a shop or two. I then realized we had time to make the 4:00 train for the Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad. The four-car train does a three-mile out-and-back trip along the harbor and a track that is only two feet wide (standard tracks are four feet, eight and a half inches). It was cheaper to build narrow gauge railways, but they couldn’t haul so many people or so much cargo. Anyway, the train was a very relaxed tour, going about four miles per hour, but it was relaxing and interesting, and all the seats faced the harbor. Another successful butt-sitting tour. We headed home via Lewiston so we could eat supper at Roy’s Hamburgers again.

Today (Saturday) was forecast to be cloudy in Rockland all day, so we headed that way. As you may remember, when we were there the other day, fog rolled in later in the day, so we couldn’t see much near the ocean, so we skipped driving up Mt. Battie in Camden. With clouds today, we figured we could fix that.

So, when we got to Rockland about 11:00, we were greeted with thick fog. We improvised, walking and window shopping down one side of Main Street and up the other. It’s a fun shopping scene with many galleries and quirky shops.

Once we had finished Main Street, the fog had lifted to low clouds, so we drove over to the Samoset Resort to get lunch on the outside deck that overlooks part of the golf course and the ocean. We couldn’t quite see to the other side of the bay, but we could see quite a ways out. Then the fog started rolling back in. As we finished lunch, it was getting hard to see the sea.

We went up to Camden anyway to see if the weather was different. As we drove, the fog gave way to low clouds, but upon getting to the town, we couldn’t see any of Mt. Battie, not even the base. So we turned to window shopping again, and spent a long time sitting in the park next to the harbor. At one point, the mountain made a brief appearance, but by the time we got back to the car, the moment had passed. We drove home. We were sad to have missed driving up to Mt. Battie and the views it offers of the coast, but we had still made a good day on the coast. We ate a quick supper at home and finished the day with ice cream beside a river in the next town up the road, Wayne.

And so wraps up the Maine portion of our trip. We were going to stay another day, but it is supposed to rain pretty hard all day tomorrow, so we figured we might as well use the wet day as a travel day. We’ve booked a place in Ithaca, New York, which is a pretty town, so we can continue the touring there if the weather is good and we get there efficiently.

Maine has been a fun and delightful time.