Mostly Butterflies and Birds and the Seagull Who Stole My Lunch

Monarch Caterpillar on Milkweed - Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens

Monarch Butterflies - all over

Swallowtail - Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens

Not a Monarch - Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens

Bald Eagle - Moose Point State Park

Note: no Moose

Glossy Ibis - Scarborough Marsh

Cormorant - all over

Deer - Several places. Yawn. Didn’t even bother trying to take pictures.

Trolls - Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens

Seal - Schoodic Peninsula, Acadia National Park. Saw it on Shabbos, so no picture. You will have to take my word for it. It was extremely cute. You will have to take my word for that also.

Something With a Dorsal Fin - Schoodic Peninsula, Acadia National Park

Possibly an orca? A porpoise? The trick is, when you see seabirds circling a spot in the ocean, there is usually some predator in the area.

This is the Seagull Who Stole My Lunch - Schoodic Peninsula, Acadia National Park

This is how it went down. First, he landed nearby. He kept hopping closer. We shooed him away. And then! When I was distracted taking pictures of the dorsal fin pictured above, he swooped in from behind and grabbed the wrap right out of my hand! He gobbled down the wrap and left the filling. But the joke was on him! The wrap was low carb.

Porcupine - Somewhere in these bushes. He didn’t hang around to pose.

I’d never seen a porcupine in the wild before!

Barnacles and Mussels - Schoodic Peninsula, Acadia National Park

Second Bull Moose Sighting! - This time at LL Bean

Islands and Ferries - Part 2 – Monhegan Island

It’s a 1½ hr boat ride to Monhegan Island from Boothbay Harbor. We went with Balmy Days Cruises (highly recommend). Leaving Boothbay Harbor at 9:30am with the return trip from Monhegan leaving at 2:45pm, we thought we would have plenty of time to spare. As it turned out, we could easily have spent another day there.

Soon after departing, the weather went from bad visibility ...

to worse ...

to zero visibility. 

Fortunately, I didn’t get seasick, because if I had, the “Just Keep Your Eyes on the Horizon” advice would have been useless. What horizon? 

Here is Bob talking to Emergency Backup Captain Thoren. Bob was asking about navigation and collision avoidance in the days before GPS, radar, radio, etc. Don’t know what made him think to ask.

Coming into Mohegan harbor

On land

The island is overrun with artists

The streets are unpaved

The Cliff Trail. “Generally considered a moderately challenging route.”

Remains of a 1948 shipwreck (a dense fog around the island caused a tug boat to run aground)

We didn’t even make it half way around the island on the Cliff Trail before running short on time. We had to cut through the interior to get back to the dock in time to catch the boat, the last (of only two) of the day. Fortunately, this trail took us past the Tourist Attraction Mandatory Lighthouse. 

View of the town from near the lighthouse, and then back to the dock.

Fun Fact 1: Emergency Backup Captain Thoren is a real captain, but was working as a first mate on our trip.

Fun Fact 2: Ships need to signal their presence in zero visibility or at night by blasting their horns frequently according to ecfr.gov . However, Thoren told us, our boat only needed to do a “ping” whatever that is. Lucky for us, or we would have gone deaf.  

I looked it up and per clause (i) of ecfr.gov: “A vessel of 12 meters or more but less than 20 meters in length shall not be obliged to give the bell signals prescribed in paragraphs (g) and (h) of this Rule. However, if she does not, she shall make some other efficient sound signal at intervals of not more than 2 minutes.” Such as a ping. 

Fun fact 3: In the days before GPS, radio beacons, and radar, ships would try and figure out their location and heading by observing the sun and stars. Later they used charts together with complicated devices such as marine compasses, astrolabes, sextants, chronometers, etc. Many of which still required being able to see the sky. 

Pretty amazing to me, considering I can’t even remember the difference between longitude and latitude, port and starboard, or even locate my car in a parking lot.

Islands and Ferries - Part 1 - Peaks Island

If you draw a straight-ish line from one end of Maine to the other, staying as close as you can to the coast without going down any of the “fingers”, it’s about 300 miles. (The B on the map is our current location - Camden Hills State Park.)

There are over 4,600 islands off that coast!

Many of these islands are tiny and uninhabited, some are connected by bridges to the mainland or each other, and others can only be reached by private boat or ferry.

These Islands just ooze charm.

Casco Bay Lines Ferry to Peaks Island from Portland

Then biked the 3 ½ mile Scenic Loop Road around the island.

About halfway around the island, we walked a trail in the Steele Conservation Area through a jungle to the remains of a huge WWII battery.

Every inch of which has been artistically graffitied. Even the insides of the pitch-black tunnels.

Someone enterprising should set up a kiosk selling spray paint à la Cadillac Ranch in Texas

keepingupwiththeparentalunits.blogspot.com/2022/02/continuing-home-new-mexico-to-oklahoma

Fun Fact Maine has a longer coastline than California! California’s coast is 840 miles long. If you stretch out the coves, inlets, etc of Maine’s coast and remeasured, Maine has over 4,500 miles of coast. When you add in the coastline from Maine’s 4,600+ islands, you now have 7,000 miles!