Sunday, August 18, 2013

A vacation day

Having declared a husband holiday, I was admittedly at something of a loss to know just exactly what to do with one. But Aimee came to the rescue and suggested some tourist-type activities, a trip to the Penobscot Bridge Observatory, and to the Penobscot Marine Musuem.


For those of you who don't know, the Penobscot is the river system that divides Maine in two, separating the midcoast and southern Maine from "downeast." It's a huge river, with a large salt bay that has many big inhabited islands and hundreds of little ones.
 


The Penobscot Narrows are down by Bucksport, and a bridge on US Highway 1 there has been recently replaced. The old iron suspension bridge rusted out and was replaced with a spectacular concrete and steel structure, built by the same firm that makes many of our wind turbine foundations.



There's an observatory at the top, over four hundred feet in the air. The view as you step off the elevator is vertiginous, even for an old mountain climber like me. 

This is the site of a famous Revolutionary War sea action between the US and British navies, the Penebscot Expedition. One of the ships sunk in that encounter, the Defense, was owned by the same man who owned our property in the early 1800s, Israel Thorndike.


I expect that ordinarily there would be a lot of tourists up there, but we got there early and beat the crowds and enjoyed a great view across Waldo, Penobscot and Lincoln counties.


There was even a pirate ship (or at least a passing yawl) flying the Jolly Roger.

We topped off our tour with the museum, and then some clothes shopping at Renys. I needed pants (trousers) and shoes for work. I could only bring myself to get the former. The shoes seemed too dear.

All in all, a nice change from building work. It seems like only yesterday we broke up for the summer.





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Welcome to our Farm Blog.
The purpose of this blog is for Aimee and I to communicate with friends and family, with those of our students, and other folks in general who are interested in homesteading and farming activities.

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