Tenting Again

Intrepid Tracker and tiny tent trailer at Lobster Buoy Campsites

7/14/12: After luxurious living for the month of June in our rented Camden house, we are quite happily back to basics in our tiny tent trailer.  We hope that July brings good weather, but right away two afternoons of grumbling, rumbling thunderstorms, stunning sheet lightning, and torrents of rain put our fifty year-old old tent to the test.

Hallelujah - the rain rolls right off!  The first week it rains often in the night and often in the day, testing the tent, and making boat work impossible.  We are cozy in our canvas cave: reading, talking, listening to the Sacramento/Stockton NPR station on our smart phone.

As for our campground, it is a very special spot - the Lobster Buoy Campsites in South Thomaston, Maine with just forty sites.  The land has been in the same family since 1916, when it was farmed by Eleanor's (the current owner's) grandparents.  Their little “camp” (house) that they built the year they were married and given the land is still here at the top of the low hill that runs down to the cove, although a bathroom has long since been added to replace the "backhouse" (outhouse).  One of Eleanor's daughters lives in the little house now; the other daughter lives on a Maine island, population: 8 families.

Eleanor's mother, Mabel, lived on this property her entire life and died here at eighty-eight after a full day's work here on a tractor and riding lawn mower.  Sometime during Mabel and her husband's (Fred's) lifetime, they opened the campground, and it is now Eleanor's..

Island with house and horses.

The place is full of character and characters. Eleanor is an energetic, seeming seventy-something hippie with a blue bandana headband worn around her forehead and her shoulder-length, graying hair. Her partner, Doug, with his long hair, old-style prosthetic left arm, and taciturn manner, looks like someone she met during the summer of love. We keep discovering campers (who are now in trailers or RV's) who have been coming every summer for thirty or forty years and whose children and grandchildren now come.  And, they all have tales to tell around the campfire about Mabel and Fred, and the campground in years gone by.  The small bathhouse, with two showers each for the men and women, is old and funky but clean, with lots of hot water for the two quarters you put in the coin slots. There are still some of the apple trees from Fred's orchard, and at each campsite, a weathered wooden picnic table, and a rusted truck tire rim as a firepit.

Lobster Buoy Campsites cove and island with Osprey nest.

The cove is home to clams and lobster pots, and boats from dinghies to kayaks to motor boats to lobster boats.  There are at least nine small islands off the cove.  On one there is a visible house, and the family who owns it brings in horses to ride every summer.  Another island has a skeletal evergreen tree topped with an osprey's nest.  The legend is of a man who invested all of his life savings to purchase the island and started building a house on the ocean side until environmentalists won a lawsuit that stopped the development to protect the osprey.

At last, it does seem like Conrad's health is improving slowly. His neck and back are still a problem, but better.  He's off to the chiropracter again this morning.  He's decreased his blood pressure medication to a point where the dizziness has lessened (it's not gone entirely) and his blood pressure is still low.  No matter the boat work delay, we're having fun and eating lots and lots of lobster.

Conrad waiting for lobster.

Lobster prices are so low that some lobstermen aren't even going out because the cost of fuel and bait exceeds the price they get for their catch.  We are diligently doing our part to raise that price by eating lobster almost daily, and exploring local spots on the water where the lobster boats dock.  It seems as if every back road in the direction of the Atlantic leads to another lovely, granite-rocked cove, edged with evergreen forest.  We've eaten at simple lobster diners with picnic tables on docks, at a high quality restaurant with a large menu, and our favorite, a place where you bring everything you need to eat and drink except the lobster, which they cook for you on the spot and bring to your picnic table.
 

Miller Lobster Company - "diner on the dock."

Lighthouses and Lightheaded

6/30/12: This June was one of the rainiest Junes in the history of Maine. So, of course, it poured on June 23^rd, the first day of the Midcoast Maine Lighthouse Challenge, which was offering free admission to seven area lighthouses.  The next day was clear and I went to two lighthouses.  Both of the lighthouses I visited were quite small. Each had a home for the lightkeeper to live in, but the actual lighthouse was a small building at the end of a walkway some distance from the home.

Marshall Point Lighthouse at the end of a long, wooden ramp, and the Keeper's House

The Marshall Point Lighthouse is at the end of a long wooden ramp, which begins just steps away from the lightkeeper's house. If you've seen “Forrest Gump,” you've seen the lighthouse - it's where Forrest ends the eastern segment of his cross-country run.

Marshall Point Lightkeeper's House

The original Marshall Point Lighthouse was built in 1858 and had seven lard (oink, oink) oil lamps serving as the light.  Now it's all automated and electric – boring.  In the late 1800's, there was also a bell tower with a bronze bell weighing over a thousand pounds.  Inside the tower was a weight mechanism, somewhat like the one in a grandfather clock, and a hammer that went through the tower wall.  When it was foggy the lightkeeper wound the mechanism, just like he would for a grandfather clock.  One winding lasted 4½ hours with the hammer striking the bell every 20 seconds.  Now that's replaced by a boring automated foghorn. 

The original 1832 lightkeeper's house had one and a half foot thick, stone walls.  Lightning destroyed the house in 1893 – that must have been one huge thunder and lightning show!  The current two-story, white clapboard, Colonial Revival house replaced the stone one.  It must have a lightning rod on it....

The keeper's house contains a museum with lighthouse and lobstering memorabilia, including a large collection of lobster buoys.  It is amazing how many unique markings the lobstermen have come up with to paint the buoys that mark where their lobster pots lie on the ocean floor.- each lobsterman (there aren't very many lobsterwomen) has his own design and color scheme. 

An old stone quarry

Near the lighthouse there are a number of quarries that used to ship stone by sea to many places.  All the stone was cut by hand, and the museum has an exhibit of old stone cutting tools and photos of the stone cutters and the quarries.  In the days of horses and carriages, the quarries supplied most of the cobblestones for New York City.  The first ones cut and shipped were too large for the horses' hoofs, and they slipped on them and were often injured.  They tried cutting smaller cobblestones and those worked.

Fresnel lense light at Owl's Head

Next, I went to the Owl's Head Lighthouse. The lightkeeper's house there is at the base of a hill and I climbed steep stairs up the hill to the lighthouse, which sits on a cliff overlooking Rockland Harbor (where our boat is). The lighthouse was built in 1852, and still uses its original, beautiful fresnel lense.

Ships did founder at Owl's Head, and the lighthouse was necessary.  The most dramatic tale is of the “two frozen lovers” who were shipwrecked on the point during a blizzard in the 1850's.  A small schooner was anchored at a point not far from Owl's Head one stormy night, and the captain went ashore leaving the first mate, and a seaman aboard, along with the one passenger – the first mate's fiancee, Lydia. 

Around midnight, as the storm intensified, the cables holding the ship snapped and it drifted across the bay and smashed onto the rocky ledges south of Owl's Head.  The three on board huddled on the deck of the ship under blankets, and as the schooner was breaking up, the seaman managed to climb over the ice-covered rocks to shore.  He was saved by the lighthousekeeper who just happened to be driving by in a sleigh.  A dozen men were rounded up to rescue the remaining pair and managed to get aboard the remnants of the ship, only to find the two lovers frozen inside a block of ice.

Steep stairs to Owl's Head Lighthouse, which sits perched on the edge of a cliff

Leaving nothing to chance, the rescuers wrestled the block of ice to the keeper's house and started thawing it out in the kitchen.  They chipped away the ice around the two lovers and kept them in cold water, slowly raising the temperature.  As the water warmed, the rescuers were able to move and massage the limbs of the pair.  Amazingly, after two hours of exercising and massaging, Lydia showed signs of life.  And, after another hour, the first mate opened his eyes and asked where he was.  The next day both were able to eat and drink.  All three miraculously recovered, and the two frozen lovers married to live happily ever after.

Meanwhile, back at the boat, work is slowed by rain and health problems.  Conrad has been having bad back and neck problems.  Having to replace the starter on the Tracker wasn't very good for his neck.  Without the hydraulic lift that he uses in his shop at home, he had to contort his tall body to reach everything.  Three visits to a chiropracter have helped, but our bodies are not as forgiving as they once were.  Yes, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.


As if that isn't enough, he is having lots of dizzy spells during which he cannot even stay standing.  Since dizziness is one of the side effects of his blood pressure medicine, he asked his doctor to prescribe a new medication, and the dizzy spells got worse!   Recently he tried cutting back on the amount of the medication while monitoring his blood pressure levels, and things seem to be improving.  But, it's raining again....


I think our three year plan of boat renovation and travel before we ship the Flussmaus to Europe is becoming a four year plan!  The boat isn't close to ready, but we are having fun and in a beautiful place.  It's hard to complain about having to be in Maine longer than expected.