We took our rented kayaks out on the ocean. We went from Rockport Harbor out to Indian Island Light. Then we crossed over and saw our campground from the water. It was a long trip, but surprisingly easy paddling. We weren't even sore the next day. Here are some pictures from the trip.
Indian Island Lighthouse (This is the one you see from our campground).
Herring gull on buoy. This is the kind of buoy that the large schooners tie up to. Then they take their dinghys to land.
Wiley took this shot of me. We had just started out, and I was fascinated by how clear the water was. You could see the kelp almost down to the bottom--maybe 10-15 feet deep! That's the prow of his kayak in the bottom right corner of the picture.
Here's Wiley--looking great with his hat and shades!
The next day we went to Fort Point State Park in Stockton Springs to see the lighthouse and Fort Pownall. I had put down a lot of historical stuff about these two places in the last blog, but I don't have the energy to put it all together again, so if you're interested check out this sign about the state park in general and the next picture about the fort. (Don't forget that if you click on the picture, it'll get bigger!)
Fort Pownall information. (There's nothing left of the fort now except the moat.)
This is the Fort Point Light. http://lighthouse.cc/fortpoint/
This is the bell (it sits in its own short tower). I'm not sure whether it was used to warn of fog or what.
Since we still had plenty of time, we stopped on the way back to take a closer look at Sears Island. We had seen it briefly on an early visit to Searsport, but didn't have time to explore it then. The island is owned by the State of Maine, but it's threatened with commercialization. Nature Conservancy and some other groups are lobbying hard to get it turned into a park. It's one of the largest uninhabited islands on the East Coast. We walked across a paved auto bridge that you're no longer allowed to drive across, and then walked out a paved road to the opposite side of the island. There were lots of wild flowers and the weather was nice. It was a good walk.
At this point, we still felt like walking and the beach called to us. So we violated a cardinal rule of happy hikers--we headed around the island without any water, no map, and no idea when the tide would come in. We were fortunate and made it back to the car without any problems except that the walk was much longer than we'd intended. We were pretty tired and our feet hurt from walking on the rocky shore (this part of the beach doesn't have nearly as many rocks as the second half that we walked)!
This lobster trap looked fairly new. The beach was deserted, but there were a lot of lobster buoys and boats in the water.
I spotted this seal first, and then Wiley saw him, too. Then we decided it wasn't a seal, just a shiney rock. I'm so glad I walked closer for a second look! He dove into the water right after I took this shot.
I kept seeing beautiful shells and driftwood that looked almost like still lifes to me. When I saw this one, I realized that some artist had been arranging these found objects! This one is gorgeous, don't you think?
There were a lot of large hewn timbers on the beach, many with big iron spikes in them. To me it looked like the remains of a very old ship.
The last of the still lifes was kind of creepy looking!
By the end of our trek, the cold water felt mighty good to my poor tootsies!We stopped for ice cream on the way home, and I ate a huge hot fudge sundae!
Please post some comments on this one so that I know people are finding my blog!
5 comments:
Found it with no problem! Wonderful pictures, as always, except for the first one of you (in a kayak, I believe) didn't show up, at least on my computer. Wonder who that mysterious still-life artist was!
Apparently Lucie and I were on your blog at the same time. At least two pictures didn't show up for me when I first signed on but now that I've signed back on, the photos are all there.
Now the questions -- aren't kayaks hard to balance? They aren't very wide.
I love the many colors of green in the wildflower photo. I've saved it and when my son gets here early Wednesday morning, I want him to save it for one of my screensavers.
The lobster trap photo -- that is what I call a rocky beach. It looks like a sandless shore.
The seal photo -- are those all broken shells all over the area? I think that's the correct photo.
All I can say about that pile of junk that you called fantastic still life -- it's not my idea of something fantastic. I actually thought the creepy still life of the lady with the long hair in the chair was more appealing to me. [Smile] Yeah, I just had to add my comment here.
Correction -- it's the picture of you soaking your tootsies where I'm wondering about the broken shells.
I was able to find your blog site without any problem.
I don't know what's going on with the blog. I hope Mark will be able to switch me back to the old blogspot. Uncle Ed, Teresa and Troy--I'm sure glad you saw the first posting. I think it was much better!
The kayaks were very stable. They're not wide, but your body weight is down on the bottom.
All the beaches up here are rocky--no sand, no shells, just rocks of all sizes!
I thought the still lifes were quite attractive. They were sort of a statement about the "found objects" of that area.
Thanks, everyone, for sticking with me. I'll get the quirks worked out.
Add me to the people who saw the first blogspot. I was going to share it with Wiley Sr and it was gone. I didn't mention it as I'm kinda duh with my computer skills.
I'm glad to know I wasen't having a bad computer day.
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