After Arriving In Maine

Time to get you all updated. We arrived in Maine on about the 30th of July, tired but undaunted. Spent that day driving across the Green Mountains in Vermont, the White Mountains in New Hampshire, and for all I know the Chartreuse Mountains in wherever (don't let ANYONE tell you there is nothing to these babies just 'cause they're 'only' about 5000 feet tall; you gotta measure that in the context of the surrounding landscape, and they're talking about sea level. Some of these roads are every bit as hard and challenging as anything in the Rockies).

We got to the Lewiston vicinity about 5PM and found a KOA to rest our weary heads. It turned out to only be about 30 minutes from the hospital, and very pleasant, nice people running it, so we decided to stay there and paid them for a month after the first week.

After we were here about a week, we found a little Bayliner runabout that some kid had for sale, kinda beat-up but has a new 350 V-8 and runs like a scalded rabbit. It turns out that the park we are at is only about 10 minutes from the public ramp at Richmond that launches into the Kennebec River (BIG river, you can drive a small boat all the way from Popham Point in the Atlantic to the State Capital at Augusta). This picture is from us running the river by the Bath Iron Works shipyard...



So, Allison has begun her Maine assignment, seems to like it fine, likes the people. They are somewhat backwater as far as their technology and procedures, and Lewiston is a little run-down (the textile and paper industries vanished about 15 years ago, leaving them kinda high-n-dry economically in the city) but we don't spend ANY free time in Lewiston, there is too much to do over where we are on the river and the coast to even bother...

By the way, we have found out that you can go down the Kennebec, cut over into the ocean through Hell's Gate (this is where the Kennebec and the Androscoggin Rivers join up at Merrymeeting Bay, and the water phenomena called 'heaves' or 'chops' where the currents go over submerged ledges are the damnedest thing you all ever saw) and get through all the way to Boothbay Harbor. We went all the way up the coast just the other day. Quite an adventure, good thing they had a gas station at the Boothbay Marina! There are about 900 million lobster traps in all the bays, each with its own color-coded buoy to denote ownership. It's quite akin to what we imagine negotiating a WWII mine field must have been like; we hooked one with the outdrive, luckily it didn't foul the prop and we just kinda backed off'n it, but I thought I might hafta dive to clear it. Click on the pic below for an expanded view of what it's like.


Another very cool trip(s) we took in the boat was down the river to Bath, to the Maine Maritime Museum. It has a mind-boggling display of a 18th-19th century shipyard, lots of live exhibits and a working sailing vessel, the Sherman Zwicker, that was a commercial vessel until the 1940s. We can use their dock to tie up, and it's something you just can't do in one day, so we have been there three days just to do the whole thing. They also have a shop where you can buy USGS and NOAA depth charts, which we needed badly so we don't hit a rock or a ledge, as these waters are very dangerous if you aren't careful. LOTS of old wrecks on the river and in the bays, you will just be driving along and there's a half-sunken schooner or trawler; they just leave 'em there if it's gonna be too expensive to haul 'em free or if they're too damaged to repair. Very odd, like a freeway where they just leave accidents where they occurred and post notices so you don't run into them...

Our boat tied up at the Maine Maritime Museum. Again, click for a larger view.


I'm not done with the August posts yet, gotta lot more pictures, but I'm about to run out of battery so I'll do more later. Everybody take care.

OK, I'm back. Got some more pictures; I'm just gonna 'caption' them and let ya look...

The bridge over the Kennebec at Augusta from the middle of the river...


The Ancient Mariner in a furry red costume...


Allison and our housemates at the Gardiner KOA...


A Mid-1700s mansion on the Kennebec (note the all-granite construction) that belonged to a 'Paper Baron'...


This is interesting. It's a 'perspective'-style channel light on the Kennebec on the way in from the ocean. It works whether it's day or night. The structure in back is elevated about 10 feet above the front one, and you line up the lights (at night) or the towers themselves (if it's daytime) on your way in, so you don't run up on the scary shoals on either side of the river. This marker set is still in operation after almost 300 years...


This is a Civil War-era fort guarding the mouth of the Kennebec River, as seen from the water. We also visited this place, called Popham Point, by land on another day and sat on the fort's rampart and ate ice cream cones. This is also the site, now being excavated, of the English colony that was founded the same year as Jamestown in Virginia; the only difference is that this one's first winter was so severe that everyone died and the settlement was abandoned. The last entry in the log was something about how no one should EVER live here because the climate was so hostile. Also, the local Indians were so intelligent that they stole boats from the settlement and used them to attack the colonists from the river...


OK, here's the light at Hell's Gate. This is where you turn hard to port heading in toward the Bath Iron Works; the channel is only about a hundred yards wide at this point so big ships heading in have to kinda stop, reverse rudder and turn on a dime to keep from ending up in the woods...


If you look carefully you can see the old pilings in the bay here. This is Popham Bay right on the ocean. This is where, before any highways came this way, the big coastal steamers from Boston or New York would come in from the Atlantic. They would drop off their loads, and then the passengers and freight would be reloaded onto river steamers for the trip north to Bath, Richmond, Gardiner, Hallowell and ultimately to Augusta. P.S. In the background you can see the Seguin Island Light; the ocean, ledges, rocks and shoals here are literally strewn with the corpses of ships that came to grief in 50-to 80-foot seas during storms. Lots and lots of ghosts here...