It was pure serendipity. We were making the long drive from Greenville to Laura’s sister’s house in Florida, and I had downloaded several podcasts from NPR’s This American Life to listen to along the way.  At random I selected the episode “Leaving the Fold”, and was treated to a story that has many parallels with the story of Gov. Mark Sanford’s fall from grace.

The first part of the episode tells the story of Jerry Springer.   If people think of him at all, they know him as the host off the off-beat TV talk show where idiots yell at each other about ridiculous things.  The truth is, he was a very promising politician in the Democratic party in the late 1960’s, working with Robert Kennedy’s campaign.  It looked like he had a bright political career of his own ahead of him.  That was all brought to a crashing halt by an indiscretion similar to Sanford’s. Read the rest of this entry »

Early Sunday morning we missed breakfast at the inn, but our host had set aside coffee and scones to go for us. We loaded up the rental and made the trek from Belfast through August and Lewiston to Portland. Rental returned, flights boarded, we made the trek home without incident and found both cats and the house in fine shape.

One of our goals had been to visit and photograph as many lighthouses as we could. While we couldn’t possibly get around to all of them, I think we put a pretty good dent in it. All told, we saw thirteen lighthouses. I was wondering if we shouldn’t run out and find another one for superstition’s sake, but I think we’ll just leave it at that. Here’s the list in order that we saw them…

Day 1

Fort Point

Dice (Dyce) Head

Deer Island Throughfare

Pumpkin Island

Day 2

Rockland Breakwater

Day 3

Bass Harbor

Day 4

Pemaquid Point

Ram Island

Burnt Island

Day 5

Marshall Point

Owls Head

Day 6

Winter Harbor

Prospect Harbor

I had really hoped to get back down to the Portland Head Lighthouse. I was disappointed that my only shot of it was in the rain. However, with the weather as bad as it has been this past week, I don’t think it would have mattered.

One weird little epilogue remains to close out the trip.  As I was going back through our photographs I wondered aloud to Laura as to how many of them were purportedly haunted.  I remember several Ghost Hunters episodes set in lighthouses, and there is a general air of loneliness and spookiness about them in general.  Her response caught me off-guard:  “Do your research, then I’ll tell you what I saw.”  What??

So, I did a quick Google search using the phrase “Maine haunted lighthouses.”  The most prominent hits told of a haunting at Owl’s Head Lighthouse.  I relayed this to Laura and she said that while at Owl’s Head, she had caught a figure moving out of the corner of her eye.  What she saw roughly fit the description of the supposed ghost, but it wasn’t there when she glanced back.  When I zeroed in on Owl’s Head with my research, that really shook her.  Spooky coincidence or real ghost?  Who knows?  It does add a nice little open-ended coda to our tales of travels in Maine, though.

Saturday, June 27

At breakfast this morning there were two new couples. Our friends from earlier in the week had moved on, and were replaced by newcomers. Laura and I were now the old-timers at the inn, and could talk about the breakfasts, what to do in town, etc.

We wanted to visit Acadia National Park once more. Even though it was a Saturday and likely to be crowded, and the weather was still not cooperating, we decided to head roughly in that direction.

When we reached the bridges over the Penobscot Narrows we decided to visit Fort Knox, located on a bluff over the river, and possibly see if the bridge observatory was open. Laura had hear rumors that the elevator had recently gotten stuck in the 42 story tower, and wasn’t keen on giving it a try, so I was by myself for that jaunt. Read the rest of this entry »

Friday, June 26

Strange, but tragic news this morning – not only did Farah Fawcette succumb to her cancer, but there was news that Michael Jackson had died suddenly.  Add in the death earlier this week of Ed McMahon, and the celebrity death trio is now complete.

Yesterday’s puffin cruise had been canceled because of fog.  Today didn’t look much better.   We were afraid to commit ourselves to one direction with the possibility of another cancellation, but did so anyway, heading south.  Before we got too far along the way I called the boat company, and they said that they planned to sail.  We guessed that things must be better down near the coast. Read the rest of this entry »

Thursday, June 25

This was supposed to be our best day, weather-wise, so we had reserve a place on a Puffin Cruise that was supposed to sail from Port Clyde. However, things didn’t look quite as nice when we got up. We started out anyway, headed back south through Camden and Rockland. We had just stopped for a bit more coffee when I got a company from the Monhegin Boat Line that the port was socked in, and that the cruise had been canceled.

They did rebook us for Friday, but it put us in something of a quandary. We had wanted to head back to Acadia at some point, especially before any weekend crowds gathered. Now, though, we were on the opposite side of Penobscot Bay, and we were possibly obligated for tomorrow. We decided to continue in this direction and see if we could find some of the lighthouses along these lower peninsulas.

Our first target was Pemaquid Point. I had remembered visiting here from our previous trip to Maine, and remembered the fort and beach. I thought it might be a good diversion. Read the rest of this entry »