I Saw Three Ships

Hey, it's Christopher again. I'm going to assume that most of our readers are not familiar with the town of Boothbay Harbor, so I'm going to let you in on a little secret about the town usually reserved for locals: Boothbay Harbor is, as it turns out, a harbor. Armed with this knowledge, we knew we'd be able to see things most tourists might miss. As is often true of harbors, a wide variety of ships sailed in an out of the sheltered port nestled between two peninsulas, of which Maine has about a thousand, and it seemed like it would be a wasted opportunity if we didn't go out on at least a couple of them. Mom picked up a handful of brochures from the campground office, and as though performing a card trick, she fanned them out and picked three cruises for us to take around the harbor and nearby islands.

Puffin raft

The first of these was Cap'n Fish's Puffin Watch Cruise. The omission of half of the letters in 'captain' provided a maritime authenticity you just can't get most places, and their connection to the Audobon Society meant we probably would actually learn something about the lives of puffins as part of the experience. We drove down to the waterfront, where we had been told parking was provided. Unfortunately, we did not consider the lack of phrases like "complimentary" or "free of charge," and when we reached the parking lot in question, the man at the booth told us we'd have to hand him a $20 bill before he'd let us park there. With eyes the size of dinner plates and jaws on the floor, we handed over the cash. As is our habit, we had arrived right on time, by which I mean several minutes late, so we didn't really have time to look for parking elsewhere.

Christopher on the top of the aquabus

Having finally experienced piracy first hand, we headed down to the dock, handed over our tickets, and boarded the Harbor Lady. The Harbor Lady was one of Cap'n Fish's fleet of three, also including the Island Lady and the Pink Lady. All three sailed both the harbor and the islands, all three were pink, and all three lacked those usual feminine qualities of a sleek ship. They were more like double-decker tourbusses that floated. Still, we were there to see wildlife, not admire the boat, and this design did provide the most effective viewing opportunities for the passengers.

"Blah blah puffins.
Blah blah preservation."

We were soon underway towards Eastern Egg Rock, where once a year, the Eastern Bunny hides Eastern Eggs for... oh no, that's something else. Eastern Egg Rock is the island home of Maine's only colony of Atlantic Puffins. On the ride out, a young woman from the Audobon Society gave a talk on marine wildlife, mostly focused on how to identify the various birds we would see, but with some information on the annual cycle of puffin life as well. We learned how to identify the Common Terns by their forked tails, Laughing Gulls by their irritating calls, Guillemots by the fact that they look like puffins save for a white patch on their wings, and Atlantic Puffins by the fact that they look exactly like puffins. This time of year, the puffins would have the colorful bills that they are recognized for, but when the mating season ended, they would molt their colors (making them harder to spot), and head far out to sea (making them much harder to spot).

Home of the Eastern Eggs

I'll huffin and I'll puffin...

When we reached Eastern Egg Rock, it was more lively than the Cap'n or the Audobon woman had seen it in ages. There were puffins everywhere, forming great rafts on the water as they joined their little social groups. They'd fly past the boat, within 20 feet of us, and flash their colorful bills as though they knew they were the stars of the show. I assume most people are familiar with puffins, but for those who aren't, they are a relative of the penguin. Unlike their Antarctic cousins, however, the puffins have retained their ability to fly, though just barely. They aren't particularly graceful; in fact, they fly sort of like a sack of flour with wings attached, and they tend to land by simply ceasing to flap and hitting the water at whatever speed they happen to be traveling at. I had to admit, though, they were charming little

Puffin take-off

creatures. They were not alone, either. Terns dive-bombed the boat, as though trying to show the puffins how to really fly. Guillemots made passes, trying desperately to be mistaken for a puffin and get their picture taken. On the shore, a few cormorants sat with their wings spread in a dragon-like pose, drying them after a morning of fishing. There were even a couple of the illusive Audobon Naturalists on the island, hiding in their natural habitat of camera bunkers and tents. Satisfied with our fill of wildlife, we rode back into the harbor, landlubbers once more until our next cruise.

Our Sultry Schooner

On our itinerary for another day was a cruise around the harbor aboard the Schooner Eastwind. We drove back down to the waterfront, and with eyes the size of saucers and jaws at our waistlines, we paid $20 for parking once more. The Eastwind was a two-masted sailing ship and a legitimately beautiful vessel. We climbed aboard with about 25 other people and set out into the harbor. We had to motor about for a bit to get away from the dock, but once we reached the open harbor, the captain and his first mate unreeled the sails, and they filled with wind. There is something timeless about letting the wind push you through the water, a sideways wing cutting through sea and sky. The captain skirted around the edge of a rain storm and caught a good gust for us, tilting the ship to about 45 degrees. A few of the passengers panicked, but our skipper assured us that the ship had a ten ton keel, and it wouldn't tip farther than that unless we hit a hurricane. We sailed as far as Burnt Island, which has a fairly interesting history that the captain explained to us. Bear with me, because I'm going to attempt one of Dad's history breaks here.

Very Historical Lighthouse

Back when the town of Boothbay Harbor was still called Townsend, around the turn of the 19th Century, Burnt Island was owned by the McCobb family, along with Mouse Island to the north. The McCobbs lived on Mouse Island in the summers, and they brought their sheep to graze on Burnt Island. In order to make the island a flat, fertile, treeless area suitable for grazing, the McCobbs simply set fire to it, lending it its name. Once the sheep were out there, they had plenty of grass and they couldn't go anywhere, so they were essentially maintenance free. As trade began to grow along the Maine coast, a growing need for lighthouses arose, and on March 3, 1821, Congress appropriated $10,500 to build three lighthouses in Maine. The McCobbs were in a place to benefit from increased trade to Townsend, so Joseph McCobb sold Burnt Island to the state for $150. A stone lighthouse was built at the south end of the island, nearly four feet thick at its base, and James McCobb, Joseph's son, became its first keeper. The solid construction lasted, and now the Burnt Island Light is the oldest original lighthouse in Maine. It was also the last to be converted from kerosene to electric in 1962, and one of the last to be manned before it was automated in 1988.

The Burnt Island Light is distinct from many lighthouses in that it was not built to warn ships, but rather to attract them. As such, it has an interesting design. Most of its square light room has red-painted windows, save for two white slits. These slits create two beams which correspond with newer lighthouses on Ram Island and The Cuckolds, creating white strips in the water that mark the channels into the harbor around Squirrel Island in the center.

A fellow schooner, the Lazy Jack

The skipper entertained us with stories of his voyages around the world, and occasionally he would point out a Harbor Porpoise to us. Harbor Porpoises are very similar to dolphins, except for the distinguishing feature that they are not called dolphins. All too soon, it was time to head back in to port, another cruise behind us. If you're in the Boothbay area, I strongly recommend taking this cruise. It's a great experience for any age, and it will make you wish you owned a schooner of your own to sail the seven seas.

Preparing to Depart

The last of our marine excursions was a cruise aboard the Bennie Alice to Cabbage Island for a clambake. This is a confusing term, since the main focus was lobster, and although there were clams, nothing was baked. We drove back down to the waterfront, and with eyes the size of eyeballs and jaws at our jawlines, we coughed up another twenty bucks. The Bennie Alice was another buoyant tourbus, but with the extremely positive addition of a full bar. We took a toodling ride around the harbor before we eventually arrived at Cabbage Island, where the family that owns the business lives. There, at their converted home/restaurant, we were served fish chowder, which keeping with my past experiences, was really a soup. It tasted good, though, and with enough oyster crackers, you could soak up the broth. They gave us about a billion oyster crackers, so this was not a problem.

Confident owner of the best hat in the picture

After the appetizer course, we walked down the the cliff side with everyone else to pick up our lobsters. I opted for the special "land lobster" which tastes just like chicken, because it is. My parents got two one-pounders, and we all got steamed corn, clams, baked potatoes, onions, and a hard-boiled egg apiece. The food was great, and the island was beautiful. Dad complained however, because he had apparently been under the impression that we were going to Clam Island for a cabbagebake. This is just the sort of joke he finds hilarious, and since I talked about the Eastern Bunny a few paragraphs back, who am I to judge?

Chow Down!

After dinner, we were given a short time to walk around the island, explore, and take pictures. I found a good looking tree and found a nice crook to take a nap in. Some family on the boat thought this was hilarious and promptly took a family photo in front of me. So somewhere out there is a picture of a Jamaican family with a couple of sandals and a tilted-down cowboy hat in the background, and if I ever find it on the internet, I'll have to link it to the blog. Pretty soon, the Bennie Alice returned to take us back to the mainland. I had a beer on the way back, but there was a lot less toodling on the return trip. Ever the helpful one, Dad grabbed the cup out of my hand and chugged half of it, since I couldn't disembark with alcohol. I've been thinking of a way to thank him, but I haven't found a big enough bug to put in his coffee yet.

With our feet back on dry land, and our 12 days in Boothbay Harbor up, we packed up the RV and drove north for Trenton and Acadia National Park. I'm sure we'll have some great photos and stories of our experiences there to share with you, although at the moment, it seems like rain will be a heavily featured theme. Until next time, Bon Voyage!

Bonus Pics:

Pemaquid Light House

Camden

Exercising schnoodles

Turkey Vulture

Common Tern

Chris and friend

Guillimots

Cormorants squatting on puffin territory

Cormorant lift off

Most photogenic of the group

Things To NOT Do When You Visit Maine

The next afternoon we planned to go to the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath which is about 20 miles from our base in Boothbay. Vicki, who does most of our tour planning, had read all sorts of good things about this Museum, so we were expecting greatness,  except for Christopher who will always expect museums to be boring and from his standpoint he is usually right.  Unfortunately, in order to get from Boothbay to Bath you have to go through Wiscasset. There, a couple of well known and popular lobster shacks at the east end of town create a weekend traffic backup for a mile or more in each direction. What should've been a half hour drive took about twice that and we would be facing the same thing on the return trip.

Piece of a boat - I don't know what piece

The Maine Maritime Museum is located on the site of the now defunct Pearcy and Small boatyard, one of the last boat yards to produce the classic American trading schooners. It produced the largest American schooner ever built, the 6 masted Wyoming, at the start of the 20th century, along with six other similarly sized vessels and dozens of smaller ships. A metal sculpture on the grounds shows the outlines of the Wyoming while it was sitting in the yard. It was humongous. At 450 feet from the stern to the tip of the jib-boom, the ship could carry 6000 tons of cargo. That length represents about the limit for wooden vessels. Over that distance, no matter what kind of wood you use or how you reinforce it, the torque applied by the ocean bends the wood enough that the seems open up and let in water. The Wyoming had to run its pumps constantly to keep from sinking. She was launched in 1909 and was lost in a storm in 1924 with all hands.

Still, 15 years was a good run for a wooden vessel. One of the points the Museum stressed was that maritime shipping in the days of the tall ships was not about adventure or glory or swashbuckling. It was about making money. Between dry rot and ship worms and weather, the life of a wooden ship was limited in the best of circumstances. If you were able to move enough cargo during the ship's lifetime to pay for the cost of building it along with a reasonable profit, it was a success and the Wyoming certainly managed that. The eventual, inevitable loss of the vessel was simply a cost of doing business.

Ships figurehead - mermaids are out, tycoons are in.

The museum suffered from the same general problem as the maritime museum we saw last year in Sturgeon Bay. You just can't have a series of 19th century wooden ships on display the way you can with muskets or pottery or what have you. So instead, the displays consisted largely of models. But as you're going through, the feeling you get is that this is not a museum about actual ships, it's a museum about somebody's weekend hobby. They had a few pieces of boats, figureheads and what have you, but no actual boats.

One thing I did learn is that they used models in the building of the ships. They would literally build a precise scale half-ship model that served as the ship blueprint, then they would measure distances on the model and multiply by "the magic number" to get the length of the piece of wood they needed. It seems kind of haphazard and obviously most of the construction was based more on the experience and knowledge the shipbuilder had gained on the last dozen boats he had put together.

For the most part, I had to agree with Christopher on this particular Museum. In the end, it just did not seem that interesting to look at a collection of model ships. So, we decided to give up on museums for the moment and go shopping.

Model boat... weekend hobby?

Vicki has been ordering clothing from LL Bean for years, so we took an afternoon to drive out to Freeport, ME which is this mail order giant's home base.  I'm not sure how it worked out exactly, but with LL Bean as its flagship store, the entire town has somehow become one giant outlet mall.  Most of the old storefront buildings and even the residences have been bought up so that signs for Calvin Klein, IZOD and even Jockey Underware could be slapped onto them to participate in the consumer feeding frenzy.  The houses that weren't turned into stores have become bistros and cappuccino bars.  That many outlet stores in the middle of what was once just a typical small New England town generates a ton of foot traffic which does not mingle well with automobiles on narrow streets.

I generally have no use for LL Bean since they don't make anything even approaching my size, so after the first snail's pace drive through town, I was ready to go back to Boothbay, but Vicki desperately wanted to have an LL Bean experience, so... well, I'll let her tell it.

LL Bean mother ship with giant water proof boot in front

Those of you who know me are aware that in the past I really loved to shop. Having a son, who is very similar to his father, means that I haven’t really been able to shop much on vacation in the past because they just wouldn’t

tolerate it. That prepared me well for the full time RV lifestyle in which one just can’t shop much because there’s no place to put anything new. We have to live by the rule – new item in, old item out. I think Roger has a harder time with this than I do. He actually likes to shop, albeit only from Amazon. But I digress.

Water proof shoes?

For as long as I can remember I have been ordering items from the L.L.Bean catalogue, or more recently on line. So when I read in my tour book that the L.L.Bean flagship store is in Freeport, ME, I just had to go. Chris refused to come, but Roger agreed because we had some other chores to do. However, he wouldn’t come inside.

Hunting and Fishing store

The L.L.Bean flagship store is a big tourist draw because it is open 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. The mail-order “store” was started in 1912 and named for Leon Leonwood Bean who invented a waterproof hunting boot to sell, hence the giant boot on the outside of the entrance. There is the main store, the home store, the hunting store, an outlet store, an L.L.Bean restaurant and I not sure what else because I didn’t go to all of them. I just went to the women’s section on the 2^nd floor and bought a lightweight fleece jacket and a summer blouse.

  

So there you have it.  An exciting afternoon in Freeport , Maine.  Alternatively, you can save yourself the drive, avoid the crowds and congestion, make your own coffee, order your fleece jacket and summer blouse online and have them magically appear on your doorstep in 3 or 4 days.  Your choice.

BONUS PICS

Shots from touring around Boothbay Harbor

Maine at Last

In April of 1945, Galen Cole was a raw recruit in the United States Army just getting in on the tail end of the war in Europe. His unit was going out on patrol, riding in a half track vehicle, and as they got underway another soldier asked Galen to trade seats with him. Galen's amiable agreement allowed him to live to tell the tale. A German artillery shell hit the side of the vehicle he had started on and killed all 5 of the men on that side of the half track. Galen was wounded but returned to the United States where, at the age of 29, he became the president of his father's company,Cole Express in Bangor, Maine.

Bangor Bunyan barely better than Bemidji

Galen enters our story because, upon leaving New Hampshire, we were scheduled to spend two days at an RV park in Palmyra, just outside of Bangor. The reason we were stopping over in Bangor is unclear. It has something to do with the order in which Vicki made reservations for our stay in Maine but at this point even she is not exactly clear on how we ended up in Palmyra. Yet there we were with time to kill and a Google search of "things to do" in Bangor Maine produces an extraordinarily short list. The  Cole Land Transportation Museum and this statue of Paul Bunyan marking Bangor as his alleged birthplace (see alternate opinions here).  Anyway, we ultimately found ourselves spending an afternoon wandering through a collection of assorted vehicles from the history of Maine travel, shipping and transportation.

Chris pilots a horseless carraige

Galen Cole grew up in the Cole Express Company and had a lifelong fondness for both cars and heavy equipment which he wanted to share, probably with anyone who would listen but primarily to schoolchildren. So when he was looking for a way to rid himself of some of the excess cash he had acquired, he decided to build a museum to honor the business his father had built. The result is a gigantic warehouse filled with vintage vehicles and various associated artifacts. In addition to passenger vehicles of all kinds and delivery trucks from the transport company, there is also a section on fire engines, one on snow transportation and snow removal since this is, after all, New England, a full-sized train engine and several railroad cars, a section on military vehicles, and several other areas of interest.

Stanley Steamer bakery truck

It would be impossible (or at least unacceptably boring) to try and give an overview of all of the items on display but a few in particular caught my eye. Near the entrance is a Stanley Steamer delivery truck. Everyone has heard of the Stanley Steamer but I had never seen one. They used either kerosene or gasoline to boil the water and were surprisingly safe. They were designed so that if too much pressure built up, the tubing would rupture and the spraying water would put out the flame long before the boiler could explode. No Stanley steamer ever blew up during use the way the steam engines on  locomotives and steamboats routinely did. The Stanley Company was eventually driven out of business by the internal combustion engine which was faster and cheaper. No Stanley Steamer was ever able to maintain a power output above 20 HP.

Model T Snowmobile

The internal combustion engine was exemplified by Henry Ford's model T of which quite a number were on display. I particularly liked this one which was altered with a kit to turn it into a snowmobile. The kit was sold by a third party company actually known as The Snowmobile Company in New Hampshire in 1922. They boasted that this contraption could go over roads that a horse and sleigh could not.

A pair of Beetles

Speaking of car kits, this is an interesting pair. In the background you see a classic Volkswagen beetle from the 1960s. In front of it is a faux MG sports car built from a kit on the exact same chassis and engine. I remember when I was in college, someone on campus had a similar kit that turned their bug into a shortened Rolls-Royce.

They had a section on John Deere products which included a 50s era tractor. There was a button on the display which looked interesting, so Christopher went ahead and pushed it. It played a recording of tractor noises. I suppose Mr. Cole thought that was terribly educational.

I will go ahead and include a few more pictures at the end of this post for your education and amusement. Meanwhile, Christopher is going to pop in here and tell you about our arrival on the New England coast.

Christopher here. I was frankly relieved to see Palmyra disappearing behind us. My parents seemed to enjoy themselves, but if you're like me, you probably think a room full of tractors is rather boring. The reason you think that is because a room full of tractors is objectively quite boring. In fact, that's where we get the common English phrase, "boring as a room full of tractors." But I digress...

Boothbay Harbor

After a few hours of driving, we arrived in Boothbay, Maine, where we would be staying for the next ten days... or possibly twelve. There was a bit of a discrepancy between what the Shore Hills RV Park had us down for and what Mom thought she'd reserved. None of us has actually gone to the effort of checking our schedule, but sooner or later we'll probably have to pay for the two extra days or else cancel them. Roger and Vicki had apparently been lobsterless for as long as they could stand, and we barely waited for the RV to come to a complete stop before hopping in the car and heading to Boothbay Harbor. Mom had a list of various lobster shacks she had read about, and she seemed determined to visit all of them in our time here. The one we chose for our first lobster of the trip was the Lobster Dock. Well, I should say

Lobster shack at long last

Dinner on the hoof

the one THEY chose for THEIR first lobster. As I have mentioned before, I'm not a big fan of these creatures. I have a bit of a phobia of scorpions, and crossing them with cockroaches and growing them to the size of a Chihuahua does very little to increase my affection. Then again, I probably wouldn't enjoy eating beef either if they cooked the cow whole and I had to butcher it at the table. Anyway, my parents seemed to thoroughly enjoy their first lobsters, if the carnage left behind was anything to go on. I had some runny clam chowder and some passable fish and chips. If you go to the Lobster Dock, go for the lobster. I was beginning to realize that if I didn't get past my issues with these crimson crustaceans, this was going to be a very long trip.

Dinner out of  the hoof

What better place to start my therapy than the restaurant we tried the following day? Kaler's Restaurant was not actually on Mom's list, but we'd ended up paying an arm and a leg to park on the waterfront for the morning, and when lunchtime rolled around, we wanted to go someplace that wouldn't require us to move the car. We ended up at a table right at the door to their dock with a nice view of the bay. They even had a touch tank out on the dock with lobsters (rubber-banded claws of course), a hermit crab, and a few mussels and clams amongst a wad of seaweed. Deciding that it was time to conquer my fear, I walked out on the dock and plunged my hand in. After brushing a lobster with my pinky, I squealed and yanked my hand right back out. After a few more tries and some frankly embarrassing whimpering, I got hold of one and plucked it out of the water so Dad could snap a picture. The lobster wriggled like mad, flapping its tail and doing its very best to reach me with claws it could not open. I looked it right in the eyestalks, preparing to tell it I was no longer afraid. It wiggled its little mouth parts as if to say, "of course you are, you big sissy," and I dropped it back into the tank. Determined to show me up, my father immediately stuck both his arms in up to the elbows, grabbed a lobster in each hand, and maniacally waved them at the camera.

Maniacally waving lobsters

For lunch, Mom and I each ordered a cup of clam chowder and a lobster roll, while Dad took his turn at fish and chips. We also had some crab fritters which were like little crab-cakes at the center of large wads of fried dough.

Quintessential lobster roll

For those of you still struggling with the opening of this paragraph, you read that correctly, I ordered a lobster roll. The lobster roll is the primary method of invertebrate consumption in Maine, more popular even than the mealtime butchery method. Deciding that I just might be able to get onboard with this whole thing if I didn't have to tear apart an exoskeleton, I threw caution to the winds and said "I'll have what she's having" after Mom placed her order. Lobster rolls come in hot and cold varieties. The former is hot lobster meat in a bun slathered in butter, whereas the latter is chilled lobster meat in a bun slathered in mayonnaise. The ones at Kaler's were cold, and, as with anything slathered in mayo, taste primarily of mayo. I actually enjoyed my first go at lobster, though I thought the meat was fairly similar to shrimp but at a considerably higher price. Still, I'm determined to try a hot, buttery one before we leave Maine.

Lobster Wharf

The last of our lobster stops so far was the Lobster Wharf, just down the street from the Lobster Dock. I actually had to look up what the difference between a wharf and a dock is, and it turns out, there basically isn't one. Both restaurants had lobsters, both had docks, both had runny chowder, but the fish and chips at the Wharf were much tastier, if you're not into a meal that requires a nutcracker. My parents were interested in such a meal, and once again I was subjected to the spectacle of two old fogeys tearing apart scorpion roaches. These were hard-shell lobsters, whereas the ones at the Lobster Dock had been soft-shell. Both of my parents seemed to enjoy the hard-shell variety even more, if that's possible.

Get use to this sight

As for day activities, we had all sorts of fun things planned for the Boothbay area. We weren't in a little podunk town like Palmyra anymore, and we had far more interesting options than a Land Transportation Museum. So naturally, we immediately visited the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath. Sigh... Dad, you want to cover this one?

to be continued ...

Bonus pics from the Cole Transportation Museum

Model T fitted out as a tractor

How did they get that in the building?

The hearse collection

Antique firetruck with traditional trampoline for firehouse parties

I want one

Yet another Model T as a freight delivery truck

Early freight transport