Heading south in Maine
Again this morning the weather was overcast as we left Bar Harbor to travel further south in Maine – and the temperatures had dropped quite a bit for the start of the weekend. However, the skies cleared relatively quickly. As we left, the stream of cars coming in to Bar Harbor was an indication of the traffic we would encounter all day !
Mainly a driving day so we had a few fill in things to do along the way. First we crossed the Penobscot Narrows just past Ellsworth. The bridge is unique in that at the top of one of the supporting towers is an observation deck. It is the first of its kind in the USA and the tallest public bridge observatory in the world.
As you can see from the map. the coastline of Maine is dotted with islands and coves and there are about 60 lighthouses along the coast. One which you may be familiar with is the “Forrest Gump lighthouse”, officially known as the Marshall Point Lighthouse. In the movie, Forrest ran for over 3 years and crossed the country 5 times. On one of those crossings, he ran to the end of the wharf to Marshall Point Lighthouse and it has lived off it’s fame ever since.
We visited the small museum there and one of the volunteers welcomed us and asked where we were from. When we said “Australia” he and the few others in the museum let out a collective “wow” and he befriended us immediately. He had been to Sydney, Blacktown in fact, on business on a few ocassions so we had quite a chat as we filled him in on our travels.
Leaving our new friend behind we set off for our destination for the day, Freeport. Nearly every town we passed through was clogged with people and traffic and there was an almost constant stream of traffic both ways all day.
We arrived in Freeport early afternoon. “The” claim to fame of Freeport is L L Bean, the clothing and outdoor recreation company. It was established in 1912 based around it’s “Maine Hunting Boot” or “duck boot” – it’s iconic waterproof boot. It now sells everything – for indoors and outdoors. It operates 24 hours a day from its headquarters store.
Other stores nearby have opened to create an “outlet centre” however L L bean really dominates the show as they have an “outlet store” competing with the others – literally right across the road from its “full price” store !
We wandered around for a while and then headed to our hotel as we had washing to attend to.
Near to our hotel we found the Maine Beer Comany so our pick for dinner was easy. A nice pizza and salad washed down with a couple of drinks rounded out our day.
Next, off to Massachusetts.