Bar Harbor to Rockland

I was whistling as I made my way down the corridor to the breakfast room at our hotel, and a housekeeper (whom I had heard singing in the elevator earlier that morning) told me that I reminded her of her Dad; she hadn't heard whistling like that since she had left Jamaica.  We both wished there was more singing and whistling in the world.

There was a light drizzle outside and it was chilly, a good day for traveling to see lighthouses.  First on the schedule was the Bass Harbor Head Light.

We stopped in Ellsworth, a picture-perfect Maine town, the main street (which they invariably called Maine Street in all these towns) descending to a roaring river emptying into a harbor.  We drove across the Penobscot Narrows Bridge Observatory, but unfortunately the observatory (at the top of that tower) was closed for the season.

We drove a long way looking for lighthouses, on winding two-lane roads, out to the inlet where these stubby little lighthouses were built (as opposed to Hatteras and Corolla) up on rocky promontories where they are quite visible well out to sea.  The Fort Point Lighthouse:

We explored Camden, a town where our friend Fred spends a week each September (and now I can understand its appeal), and had lunch out on the Waterfront.  We struck up a conversation with a man and his wife next to us - it was her birthday - and they asked us if we were "off."  That's what they call folks at the Outer Banks who do not live here, too, we told them.  There were huge rambling houses in Camden, and throughout this part of Maine, and some fine old inns; they all seem to have inter-connecting garages and barns so you don't have to get out in the snow to go from one building to another.

They are fond of turrets and towers here, too, or were back in the Gilded Age when folks came here from New York to summer in cooler temperatures.

The Rockland Breakwater Light was a challenge to find; it turned out to be a small light out on a rock breaker in the bay, impossible to photograph.  And then the Owl's Head Light in Rockland.

The plaque for Owls Head has been mounted on a piece of Cadillac Mountain Granite, and this little marker beside it recognized the Keeper's faithful dog.

I know we missed some of these lighthouses for which coastal Maine is known; you could spend a week here, rambling along the coast in drizzle one moment, and then in bright blue sky the next.  We allowed four days - Bar Harbor, Rockland, and Kennebunkport - but it was not enough.

In Rockland we found dinner around the corner from our hotel (right on the bay, where we could watch the ferry and the fishing boats going out and coming in) at Miranda's Cafe.  Martha had that old southern standby Shrimp and Grits, and our waitress assured us it was really grits, not cream of wheat.

The lobster boats in the bay in Rockland were all facing in the same direction, I noticed, like cows grazing on a hillside in the Appalachians.  I was once told that this was because the cows' legs are shorter on one side than the other, but can find no similar explanation to account for the orientation of these lobster boats.