Oh! Their Shore Has Rocks!

Day 6 – June 26, 2016

How lovely to wake up on our own and take our time stretching and getting ready for breakfast – just like we’re on vacation!  Downstairs a full breakfast bar awaits us.  There is a waffle maker, Canadian bacon and round egg patties in case you want to make a breakfast sandwich, several flavors of yogurt, fresh fruit including the cutest little citrus fruits, apple juice, orange juice, peach-citrus juice, coffee, tea and hot chocolate!  Plenty there that is GF which is grand since I’m finally hungry for the first time in days!  I think I might live through this whole episode!  

Our tummies satisfied, we’re off for a day of adventuring.  Our first stop is Wolf’s Neck Woods State Park, down on the coast.  It’s only two dollars a person and we can return later in the day if we like.  The forest ranger tells us about the browntail moth caterpillar which has many hairs that will cause a nasty rash if you brush against them.  He tells us to avoid the field by the White Pines Trail and to brush off any furniture (like picnic tables) before we sit on them.

There is a lovely trail through the forest, the Casco Bay Trail, and it opens on the famous Maine coast!  We climb down the rocks and revel in the change it makes from our white, sandy beaches.  There are islands just off the coast and one is an osprey breeding ground, the Googins Island Osprey Sanctuary.

The Casco Bay Trail also has two other view points and, of course,  we have to see both of them.  A little further along the trail we realize that we really need to go back the way we came or we’ll be walking in the woods for ever!

We were lucky to see this pink lady slipper.  There aren't many of them!

This elusive little guy was waiting for mom to feed him.

Back at the parking lot I decide to avail myself of the restroom and find that they are quite serious about the whole caterpillar thing!  They even keep the toilet paper in a sealed container to keep the hairs out!  That paints an ugly mental image!!

Next we’re off to the Desert of Maine!  I know, you’ve never heard of it!  Us, too!  We enter through the gift shop and pay for our tour.  We’re driven around by a Special Ed teacher, who tells us the history of the desert.

The story goes that a farmer bought three hundred acres of forest land, moved his farmhouse nine miles onto it using twenty-four teams of oxen over nine days, and proceeded to clear the forest.  He sold the tallest trees to the tall-ship makers and the rest went for the new car manufacturers’ steam engines.  He was a careful farmer and rotated his crops. And he prospered.

Enter his son, John.  John was too lazy to bother with rotating his crops and only grew potatoes.  He quickly depleted the soil and as it eroded, the glacial flour underneath emerged.  It is so fine and mica filled that nothing would grow.  He then tried raising sheep and they finished off the job, between their habit of eating grass all the way down to, and including the roots, and their sharp, split hooves.  Soon there was nothing but desert where there had been first forest, then farmland.

Outside the desert!

They tried live camels;  but they hated people!

At one point a spring "magically" appeared in the desert and the owner decided to build a spring house to cool off his guests.  The attraction was closed duriing WWII and when they reopened the dunes had completely covered the spring and the house!  The marker to the left starts on the roof and extended up another eight or so feet, added to the thirty feet that the house stood above the original desert floor!

Much of the bottom of this extremely tall white pine has been covered and the lower branches have converted to roots! The winds blowing between the encroaching forests funnel the wind and create the dunes.

Our chariot!

Next, the land was bought by an entrepreneur who tried to make bricks from the silt.  That didn’t work. Then he tried to make glass, but it was black and brittle.  Finally, as a joke, he began charging everyone who wanted to ask him about his “dirt farm”.  And that worked!!

Several families have owned the land since.  They have all believed that it is important to let Nature takes its course, rather than try to make “improvements” as their predecessors did. 

The original desert was three hundred acres.  As the forest has encroached along the edges the desert has gradually shrunk to only fifty-five acres and it is believed that in another seventy-five years it will be gone.  Currently, though, the tallest dune in ninety feet high!

You can also see the old barn, with a display of implements and clippings from their entry in Rippley's Believe it or Not!

There is also a butterfly room.  The biggest problem is keeping the chipmunks from eating the butterflies!  Who knew?!

Marilyn's new sneaker with a brand new monarch butterfly adornment!

Buckeye Butterfly

Fully edified about Maine’s only desert, we head for lunch.  Trip Advisor’s number three restaurant in Bath is the Winnegance General Store and Café.  It really used to be a general store and you can still buy fresh-made baked goods and some other supplies.  We eat out on the front porch and can see Winnegance Bay as we eat our kielbasa sandwich and crab salad (guess who got what!)

Next up, Popham Beach.  This is a state park, too, with another two-dollar admission fee.  We are happy to support the local parks!  This turns out to be a real sand beach!  There are lots of people enjoying the warm air and low humidity.  I wouldn’t be going in that water;  but I’m from Florida!  The lifeguards tell us that they had to rescue two adults this morning who got caught in the rip current!  It really is just like home!

This little guy and some of his friends stole the blue bag on the left and began eating the snacks inside.  It looks like a peanut to me!

We’d like to find someplace to see sunset since we caught of glimpse of the beautiful colors last night.  The guys suggest Wolf’s Neck or Reed State Park.  He head back to Wolf’s Neck since we’d like to get photos of high time to contrast with our earlier ones.  We do get some that will fill the bill and this time we see the mother osprey, her chick and even daddy coming home.  There doesn’t seem to be a lot of chance for sunset, though, and since the park closes at 8:00 and sunset isn’t until 8:30, we decide not to get locked in!!

Daddy (I think!) is on the lower branch. Ospreys mate for life.

Instead we return to Harraskeet Lobster and Lunch.  Marilyn gets the biggest strawberry shortcake in the world and I have the GF seafood chowder with huge hunks of lobster and shrimp and three enormous scallops, along with the potatoes and onions.  Sunset isn’t going to happen here, either, although as we’re driving home we catch glimpses of a gorgeous orange ball setting in the west.  We’ll keep looking for the perfect spot.  Maybe tomorrow night will be better.

Lobster tracks??

 

 

Once home we finally straighten out who owes who how much for the trip so far.  We really like to keep as even as possible as we go along.  And we go downstairs so I can get a cup of green tea and Marilyn can get her diet Coke.  Time to settle down, so we can be up early in the morning for a botanical gardens and lighthouse!