HagaFinn's BlogSpot: A Day on the Water in Maine

Tuesday was a busy day for us as we had to get up early (for us) and drive over to Bar Harbor to board the M/V Acadia Explorer for a three hour lighthouse tour. It was a new high speed catamaran (31 mph according to Neil's navigation app on his phone) that carried us to some waters south of Mt Desert Island to see several island lighthouses that we had not seen.

Our Lighthouse Tour Route

We were really blessed weather wise, as Monday was a very foggy day and we would have seen very little. The boat had a good naturalist, who was not only provided us history of the lighthouses, but shared history of Acadia National Park and the seaside "cottages"--some worth over $5 million that we could see from the boat.

After leaving Bar Harbor, we hugged the southern shore along the eastern side of Mount Desert and passed several massive summer homes. We found out that the term "cottages" applies to all sized structures, from two room cabins to great mansions owned by the Rockefellers, Pulitzer and others.

Pulitzer "cottage"

Pulitzer came here to escape the heat of New York and for the quiet. He hated loud noises and not only built the house to be quiet, but had a tower built that was insulated with steel wool and double-panes of windows. When the Coast Guard built the fog horn about 200 yards off shore, he convinced them to turn the direction of it, as the horn made too much noise when he was living here! The other great story was about Martha Stewart's large "cottage" on a bluff. The naturalist told us, with tongue in cheek, that she has the staff clean the rose-colored granite lining the driveway in the spring, pick up all the pine cones in autumn to use in decoration projects, and trap the squirrels in spring to give them a bath. We all got a good laugh from the story!

The Bar Harbor Inn with the five-masted Margaret Rose in front

As we left Bar Harbor, we cruised past the historic Bar Harbor Inn, one of the first built in the 1890's and added onto several times, so that there are close to 500 rooms today. In front is the beautiful schooner that we cruised on for a sunset tip ten years ago, on our last visit to Maine.

Our first lighthouse was Bear Island, which is just off southern Mount Desert Island. As with all lighthouses today, they are automated with solar power in most cases. The Coast Guard still maintains them to provide safety for boats and ships, while volunteer organizations take care of the grounds on many of these islands, mowing the grass, maintaining trails and picking up the garbage that washes ashore every year.

Bear Island Lighthouse

We then headed east farther out into the Atlantic and about 20 minutes south to Great Duck Island.

Great Duck Island Lighthouse

On the way back towards Mount Desert, we passed the Cranberry Islands and a U.S. Lifesaving Station located there. The Lifesaving Service helped the people from shipwrecks along the coast and saved thousands of lives. They became part of the U.S. Coast Guard in 1915 when it merged with the Revenue Cutter Service. The U.S. Coast Guard history goes back to 1790 and was created by Alexander Hamilton when he was Secretary of Treasury and created the Revenue Cutter Service.

Cranberry Island U.S. Lifesaving Service Station

From there, we headed northeast to to Schoodic Peninsula northeast of Mt. Desert Island toward Winter Harbor. We saw the Winter Harbor Lighthouse and also Egg Rock Lighthouse in this area before returning to Bar Harbor. We also learned that several of the houses at these islands can be rented for the week, though not cheap---$2000 to $4,000 a week!

Winter Harbor Lighthouse

Egg Rock Lighthouse was fairly unique in that the light is part of the keepers quarters. The U.S. Lighthouse Service usually separated these structures for fire and family reasons, but the small footprint of the island made them change the formula. We noticed this in Alaska north of Juneau at Eldred Rock Lighthouse, for the same reasons. On Egg Rock, it was so stony that lobster men would drop off soil as they came by so the lighthouse keepers wife could slowly create a a vegetable garden.

We returned to Bar Harbor in early afternoon, just in time for a very nice lunch at an Irish Pub where Pamela had some clam chowder she loved so much she got one to go and just had it for dinner tonight. Neil had...wait for it...lobster in a Caesar salad.

It was a great day on the island and we returned to the KOA RV park on the northwest side of the island in time to watch another beautiful sunset and for Pamela to get her feet wet in the Atlantic.