Midcoast Maine

August 23 to 24, 2020

We started this trip in Boothbay, mooch-camping at our friend Chip’s lake house. There are interesting sculptures in beautiful scenery. It is great swimming, although it was a little daunting to have the Canadian geese sharing the lake.

After dinner we walked around downtown and enjoyed an ice cream.

Pemaquid Point Lighthouse from a western point.

We left Boothbay and spent time touring the Pemaquid peninsula, beginning in Damariscotta.

Views in Damariscotta and the Damariscotta River

The Shell Midden, or shell mound, in Damariscotta is an interesting visit, suggested by our friend Chip. It is a rubbish dump left by prehistoric people, listed on the National Record of Historic Places.

These lovely ladies were visiting the midden, too.

We stopped for lunch at Christmas Cove in South Bristol.

Christmas Cove and the bridge at the gut – in the right hand picture you can see the antenna of the boat going through the bridge.

The reconstruction of Fort William Henry is at Pemaquid Beach. Near the mouth of John’s River, it is the site of several forts beginning in 1630, until the reconstruction of the current structure in 1908 by the State of Maine. It is a beautiful site and views from the top of the fort are spectacular.

Fort House is used as an archaeological lab

The history displays reminded me of a paper I wrote in college about Baron de Saint Castin, the Frenchman who married the daughter of the Wabanaki sachem, Marie Mathilde. They met at Castine and had a relationship that is romantically recalled in story and poetry. The Baron of St. Castine by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow appeared in The Atlantic in March 1872, and more recently For Jean Vincent D’abbadie, Baron St.-Castin was written by Canadian Alden Nowlan in 1967.