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.