Mount Battie, Camden, Maine

Mt. Battie

To present a view of the coast of Maine I've selected Mt. Battie in the heart of our midcoast in the village of Camden. As you can see from the picture above, Mt. Battie towers over Camden Harbor which, just before the summer season, is getting its fleet of large schooners ready to go windjamming with adventurous vacationers.







At the very peak of Mt. Battie is a castle like tower that can be seen in the distance over the top of a Camden Harbor schooner sail in the picture to the right. The tower is a great place for a panoramic view of the coast line. In fact, it was to the top of Mt. Battie that Edna St. Vincent Millay, the great American lyrical poet and playwright, would climb to take in the view as she wrote her poems such as "Renascence." It was in Camden that she was discovered in the Whitehall Inn reciting her poems and playing the piano.



Fortunately, a road has now been constructed to get to the top of Mt. Battie.




























And this is the face of the tower seen from Camden Harbor.

Inside is a stairway leading to the platform floor on top.

From the tower top we look back down the mountain at right at the schooners in Camden Harbor where we started our journey.

A sequence of pictures start at right, facing north, along the coast and then continue down the coast and around to the mountains on the west side. The land that you see are islands of which there are thousands along the coast. Many of these islands have residents, and some stay out there all year long. Their living is made fishing for ground fish and lobsters.


















There are numerous celebrities, like John Travolta and U. S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, that have summer homes on these islands and it is not uncommon to have them in our restaurants and stores and on our streets. They like it here in Maine because they get treated just like ordinary folk - they stand in line just like the rest of us.


















The body of water that you see in these pictures is the Atlantic Ocean and in this area is called Penobscot Bay. Beyond these islands is open water to Europe.

Notice the young couple walking up the path toward the tower. They are on vacation from Iowa and when they joined me at the top I gave them a verbal tour, with a lot of finger pointing, of the surrounding villages, lakes, islands, and mountains. A bald eagle honored us with a spectacular fly-by riding the air currents toward the ocean.

In the picture at right, you can see the harbors of Rockport and Rockland in the distance to the southeast.

To the west are mountains with many lakes hidden in the valleys. In fact, one of those mountains is the home of the Camden Snow Bowl which is the only ski slope in America where you can see the ocean as you ski down.

Note the paved access road up the mountain and ALEX hiding in the trees.

Be sure to come back because I've started collecting pictures to post a tour of Camden, and another posting of some very interesting B & B's along the coast.

Atlantic Highway: Exploration in Maine

To start this blog I should first explain that the historic Atlantic Highway came into existence as the network of roads connecting the major eastern cities which grew up along the fall line where the Piedmont of the Appalachians meets and drops down to the coastal plains. The major eastern cities are located along the fall line because that is where rivers have rapids and generated the power needed to run the mills in the old days.

The Atlantic Highway, eventually, was designated U.S. Route 1 and runs from the Canadian border at Front Kent, Maine to Key West, Florida. In other words, the Atlantic Highway connects the northern-most point to the southern-most point on the east coast of the United States.

The section of the Atlantic Highway that is part of my daily life is along the coast of Maine from Portland to Brunswick to Thomaston, Rockland, Bangor, Ellsworth, Machias, Lubec, Eastport, to Houlton. From Brunswick to Ellsworth is known as the Mid-Coast, and to the east of Ellsworth, is called Downeast Maine.

As can be imagined, there is a huge treasure of history and historic places in the Mid-coast and Downeast. Every old road that connects to Atlantic Highway has a story to tell and old ruins to explore. For instance, Thomaston was settled in 1605 and the Mayflower didn't arrive until 1620, and the Jamestown Settlement started in 1607. The Mayflower is believed to have stopped at Monhegan Island, Maine to purchase processed fish from a colony. And, of course, the American Indians were here long before the rest of us.

I will photograph some of the Maine history I find and post it on this blog for all of you.