Island Time, Maine Style

Sequin Island with the second oldest light house in Maine sitting on top. The original light was authorized by George Washington.

Today the light keepers house operates as a place for the volunteer summer caretakers to live and as a small time B&B. The B&B is cute, but the night life and restaurants are pretty limited --- in other words if you want anything beyond your breakfast muffin you have to pack it in from the mainland, along with packing out your own trash.

You can’t anchor in the bay here because of cables on the bottom that feed electricity to the island. Here’s Georgia and Kokomo rafted together on the Coast Guard mooring.

We packed a Victorian picnic lunch and hiked up the trail to the top.

It would have been a lot easier to just take the tram up. This thing is still in use to move supplies up the hill, but they wouldn’t let us take a ride. Some story about how the lighthouse family and dog and supplies in 1949 were being towed up when the cable let loose. The father and son jumped off, the mother threw the baby into a bush and the dog and mom crashed. She got severely hurt and the dog died. The baby that survived unscathed actually returned to the island with a TV film crew this summer for the first time since 1950. True story or not, we had to walk instead of ride in style.

The first order Fresnel lens is still in use. It now uses an incandescent bulb instead of having to have the mantle lit each night by the lighthouse keepers.

Next stop was Jewell Island where they have my favorite tourist stuff – rusty things. These are World War II lookout posts and gun batteries that were used to protect the Maine coastline from German U-boats. There were two of these multi-story cement spotter towers.

The view the WW-II soldiers had of the coastline while on watch.

Chris tried to steal some lobsters from a local’s pot and they threw her in jail.

I immediately took cover and blasted her free – good husband that I am.

While a bored Jewell Island caterpillar watched.

Paul