Maine - Day 27 - south Maine coast

Yellowstone Park Campground

Sunday, 27 August 2018

today's sadly fuzzy route

I had several sights I wanted to see today but, I'm sorry to say, I missed several.

I drove back down to South Berwick and from there down to Kittery, the farthest southwest town in Maine, right across the river from Portsmouth, NH. 

this is an online photo of a sight I saw but couldn't stop for - it's the bridge across from Kittery to Portsmouth

Oddly Kittery, rather than Portsmouth, is the home of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.  I knew I wouldn’t be allowed on base so wasn’t disappointed at making it only as far as the gate. 

a gate at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard

I knew just a little way farther down the road was a church I wanted to see, but the road was so narrow with multiple s-turns and lots of traffic that I’m sorry to say I missed it.  This picture is from the internet.  It's the 1^st Congregational Church and is supposed to be the setting for Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.  It looks severe enough to be a Puritan church.

church in Kittery

A little farther down the road is Fort McClary.  The blockhouse in my photo was built in 1844.  I don’t know if you can see the 2 lighthouses in my photo – the closer one is in NH on the other side of the river that the fort was guarding; the farther one on the left is known as the Whaleback Lighthouse. 

Fort McClary blockhouse

the tiny lighthouses

Whaleback lighthouse, built 1872

Not far up the road is the town of York.  (Again, everything’s so close together up here, I only drove about 80 miles today.)  In York itself there’re quite a few historical structures that have been preserved.  This photo I got off the internet (because the streets were too narrow for me to stop for a picture) is of the Old Gaol.  Built in 1719 (can you believe it?), it’s the oldest British Colonial structure that’s still in the same place it was built.  The stone part was the original, and the rest was added as time went on.  It was used as a jail until the Revolutionary War, and after that it was the York jail for years.  It’s considered one of the oldest prison buildings in the US.

Across the street I saw a marker that said on that spot in April 1775, 63 minutemen gathered and marched to join the Revolution.

I tried to get to the Whaleback Lighthouse to see it for myself but found that to do that I’d have to pay a $10 entry fee for Fort Foster, and I wasn’t interested in the fort and didn’t want to pay just for the lighthouse photo. So enjoy the internet photo above.  This is the lighthouse that was way in the distance from Fort McClary in Kittery.

York is the home of Long Beach, which surprised me for being only about 15’ wide at high tide and narrower in some places.  But Maine’s coastline is so rocky that I’m guessing any place where there’s an actual sandy beach is considered primo.

sample rocky Maine coastline

The whole beach was elbow to elbow.  It was the same across the street in the little apartments and hotels lining the sea walk – people were practically hanging out the windows, it was so crowded.  And this was a Monday!  I’d figured the crowds would have gone back to work by then, but I guess folks were grabbing the last week of summer.

Long Beach Ave. winds along the coast (duh) and after a bit comes to the turn to Cape Neddick and what’s known as the Nubble Lighthouse.  Because there were so many people I could barely drive in, let alone park, I'm posting this photo of it from the internet. 

Nubble Lighthouse

By this time I’d had enough of the crowds and decided I’d tried to see enough for one day, so I went home.