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.