Maine has fifty-seven active lighthouses; we only saw five yesterday and it took us all day! But what a fun day it was.  First up is the Rockland Breakwater light.  It’s at the end of a breakwater, built in 1888 and  7/8 of a mile long.  The lighthouse was built in 1902.

You walk along huge flat granite rocks, watching where you put your feet because there are large cracks and holes between the rocks.  It’s something of a giant jigsaw puzzle and it takes longer than you expect to get out to the lighthouse.

It was a good way to start the morning, that long walk in the sea breezes.

Next was Owls Head Light Station.  It’s located at the mouth of the Rockland harbor and was built in 1825.

The light itself sits on a rock bluff over what many people saw as the face of an owl etched by mother nature in the rock below.  I looked hard at photos but I couldn’t see the owl.

The story is that Spot, the family dog of one of the keepers kept many ships off the rocks with his ceaseless barking.  Katie would be an excellent lighthouse dog!

While we were at Owls Light we saw a brochure for Marshall Point Light, not to far away.  So of course we headed right over.  Turns out not to far away is further than you think as you ‘can’t get there from here’ and everything is up and around another bay.

But this is a beautiful lighthouse, built in 1858 near Port Clyde, a beautiful fishing village, the 30 foot light tower is out on the rocky point, accessible by a wooden bridge.

We moved on to our favorite lighthouse of the day; Pemaquid Point Light.  Don’t you wonder how names come about?    This lighthouse was built in 1827 on a beautiful rocky point.

The rocks look like liquid stone, with iron ore running through the dark base.  It’s simply amazing.  Exploring the rocks is almost as much fun as exploring the lighthouse.

This lighthouse also allows visitors up inside the tower.  It’s quite tight up there, but it was worth the short wait to climb the stairs and look out over the ocean.

 

We spent a long time at this lighthouse.  We could have sat on the rocks and watched the waves crash all day.

To break the lighthouse spell, and add some variety to our day we stopped at Fort William Henry, a restoration and a Pemaqid State Historic site on Pemaquid Beach.

Here we had a tour guide talk about some of the artifacts found at the site.  They are still excavating here each summer.

I think she was bored before we arrived and started asking all sorts of questions.  She really enjoyed telling us about the site and the work that was being done there.

Our last stop of the day was Hendricks Head Light.  We drove a long time to find this one, and in the end the closest we could get was a public beach.

Still, it was beautiful and I’m glad we found it.

I hope you enjoyed our tour of a few of Maine’s lighthouses.  We certainly did.  Today we’re going to take it easy, after all, it is a vacation!

We’ll talk later.