Maine Trip: Forts, Beaches, and Cliffs (10.2.26)

We began October 2, 2026, with an exploration of a Yankee fort, and finished it with a stroll along the beaches and cliffs of the resort town, Ogunquit.

We took a boat ride through Casco Bay, from Portland, Maine, to House Island, one of many islands in the bay.

We passed a fort built by Jefferson Davis, when he was Secretary of War for the Union, before the Civil War.  It looks like Fort Sumpter, where the Civil War began!  Although the forts in Casco Bay didn't see direct action in either the War of 1812, the Civil War, or the Spanish-American War, they were built as a coastal defense system for northern United States, particularly protecting the important port of Portland, Maine.  A Confederate ship did lurk around Casco Bay, and was ultimately blown up.

Fort Scammel, on House Island, was built in 1808 and named for a Revolutionary War general.  It was built to protect the northern coast of the U.S. from the British, which were still seen as a potential invader after the Revolutionary War.  House Island is now privately owned.

Our guide showed us the windows from which cannons shot.  The fort was housed in granite and built mostly underground to protect it.

We walked through a long, heavily fortified tunnel to reach the inside of the fort.

The inside of the fort was dark, damp, and a bit spooky.  

We each carried a lantern, as we explored the areas where the cannons were located and where ammunition was stored.

As we sailed back across the bay to Portland, we passed many different types of boats and ships, including sailboats, ferries, small fishing boats, windjammers, and a Holland America cruise ship.

I couldn't resist a lobster lunch at Boone's on the Portland pier, particularly since it was offering a $29 special!

This photo is not flattering, but it does show my delight with that lobster!

We drove down the Maine coast to Ogunquit, a resort town.  It was overcast and rained while we were there, but that just made the skies more dramatic for my photographs!  After surveying Ogunquit's main beach, we hiked the 2 mile round trip Marginal Way along the rocky coast.

 

We finished the day with a stroll through downtown Ogunquit, with its pastel houses and quaint restaurants, and then an ice cream cone.

Maine Trip: David Now and Then (10.1.26)

David goes walking whenever he can on our vacations.  On October 1, 2026, he walked for 4 1/2 miles in Kennebunk, the town in which we were staying, and surrounding areas.  We then drove upstate to Lewiston, Maine, where Dave had been an LDS missionary in the 1960s.

Kennebunk was decorated for the harvest and upcoming Halloween, as David walked.

"The Maine coast gets most of the money and attention," a docent told us at the new Maine MILL Museum in Lewiston.  Lewiston is inland, and is trying to forge a new identity, after the textile mills and brick factories that defined it for so many years closed.

As we crossed the bridge over the Androscoggin River between the twin cities of Auburn and Lewiston, Maine, we looked for the apartment where Dave lived as a missionary.  He knew it was next to the bridge and thought it was in a building like the one in the background of this photo.

The years of Dave's mission were formative and important for him.  After spending two years in New England as a missionary, Dave loves the region and returns again and again, including to such areas  as Worcestershire and Weston (Massachusetts), Lewiston (Maine), Laconia (New Hampshire), and Prince Edward Island (Canada), where he served.  

We thoroughly enjoyed the Maine MILL Museum, with its displays about the history of Lewiston, and its hopes and plans for the future.  It is located in an old textile mill building.

The museum displayed the equipment that, between the 1850s and 2000, turned out much of the fabric for the United States.  A Maine merchant anticipated the Civil War and stockpiled cotton from the South, which allowed him to stay in business while many other textile mills in New England closed.   Bedspreads became a principal product of the Lewiston mills during the 1900s.

Brick was another profitable product for Lewiston.  Portland, Maine, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, have red brick historical areas, with the brick fabricated up north in Lewiston.

The museum showed the process by which raw cotton from the South was turned into textiles.

Innovative machinery was created to run the mills.

The equipment included machines that could weave intricate jacquard patterns.

The top two sites our guidebook recommended in Lewiston were the Maine MILL Museum and the Catholic church.  The church reflected the prosperity of a bygone age, when many Catholic workers from nearby Quebec came to Lewiston to work in the mills, and there were rich donors to fund the church.

Maine Trip: Cannon Balls and John Wayne (9.30.26)

"Why do you think all these buildings in the center of the city look the same?" our Portland, New Hampshire, walking tour guide asked us on September 30, 2026.  My guess was that a leader interested in development had come to power and had the money to build.  That was the case in Sydney, Australia, a fact we learned on another walking tour.  No.  The answer was that the town had been burned to the ground in 1866, destroying 1500 to 1800 buildings and leaving 10,000 residents homeless.  The city was built back with red bricks that were produced in great abundance in upstate Maine.

We traveled, on September 30, from our condo near Kennebunkport to a walking tour in Portland, and then north to an art museum in Rockland and dinner in Camden.

Our guide, Dugan, was a well-informed, charming fellow who said he was ranked as the 11th best tour guide in the country on Trip Advisor.  He begged us to send in a review and help make him #10!

We passed the site of one of the earliest public high schools in the U.S.--built in 1821.  I enjoy learning about the history of New England, which stretches so much father back, for white settlers, than that of Utah.

We then went inside the First Parish Church, Unitarian Universalist, built in 1824.  It was the place where William Lloyd Garrison gave an anti-slavery speech to 2000 parishioners in 1832.  New England and northern New York State were hotbeds for abolitionists.

Cannonballs used in the War of 1812 and the Civil War are relics housed in the church.  We took turns lifting the very heavy balls.  

We passed a statute of John Ford, the Hollywood director who got famous making John Wayne cowboy movies.  Surprisingly enough, he came from Portland.  Our guide also told us that Portland made some of the first tin cans, and that the first food to be profitably canned was corn, followed only later by fish.  New England was once known for its corn, which is still an essential part of a New England clambake!

We walked past the fish market and piers at the old port.

Stylish restaurants are now found in the alleyways surrounding the port.

After finishing our tour, we drove north to Rockland, on Penobscot Bay.  On the way, we stopped at an antiques mall, just to browse.  It was a New England sort of place.

We stopped at Sherman Lake, where the views of flowers and trees in autumn colors were stunning.

Rockland is a little town on gorgeous Penobscot Bay.   Its port is filled with fishing boats, as well as pleasure boats for exploring the islands in the bay. We recently read that John Roberts, head justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, summers on an island in Penobscot Bay.  Over the years, many artists have also lived and painted in this beautiful area.

The Farnsworth Art Museum is a very fine, small regional museum.

Its primary exhibit asked, "What is Maine?"  It answered that question with work from Maine's past and present artists, with a heavy emphasis on N.H. Wyeth and Andrew Wyeth, both of whom painted in Maine. N.H. Wyeth painted "Cannibal Shore," above, and Andrew Wyeth painted "The Wreck on Doughnut Point", below.

 

Rockwell Kent, another prominent Maine painter, created this work depicting Maine cliffs, sea, and sunset.  The sea is, of course, a prominent theme for Maine artists.

There were sea scenes by my new favorite, Fitz Lane.

And there were some modern works like this one, titled, "Land and Development of New England," that I didn't understand.

And what was the meaning of this work?

In our ongoing search for great Maine seafood, Dave and I dined on shrimp linguini at Franny's, in Camden.