Day # 17

We drove into autumn. We left summer, and a couple hours later we arrived at fall.

It was sunny and warm summertime in Portland, Maine when we started our day. Kaylyn was dressed in a skirt and sandals as we walked around the town. In late afternoon, when we got out of the truck in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the air was chilled and we were surrounded by rust-colored mountains of changing foliage.

I thought we would be looking for cemeteries on this trip. Kaylyn loves to photograph old tombstones. However, on this trip she seems to have diverted her attention to a new passion – great little bakeries. This new fascination costs money and risks all pretense of maintaining our present weight.

This morning we visited not one, but two little bakeries in downtown Portland. The first was Standard Baking Company, reputed to be an authentically French bakery. Kaylyn got a morning bun and I got a gingerbread which had the perfect tang of ginger. We selected a raisin-almond loaf of bread to enjoy with our lunch. 

Bakery number two was called Two Fat Cats and reputes to have outstanding whoopee pies. I assume you know what a whoopee pie is because all of a sudden in the past couple of years they have become popular. You can now find whoopee pie recipe books and whoopee pie pans. This is disconcerting to us Forbes. We thought we brought Pennsylvania Dutch whoopee pies to Wisconsin, and here others have picked up the recipe and run with it. Obviously we were not entrepreneurial enough with a treat that was a specialty from the kitchen of Greg’s mom.

So, Kaylyn decided she had to try a whoopee pie someone else made. And can you guess what flavor she bought? Yep – pumpkin! She also bought a chocolate because she wants to make a ‘scientific comparison’ between the bakeries’ whoopee pie and the ones we make. What an excuse….

Between the bakeries we walked around the wharf area. I love to watch boats come in and out of docking areas. Portland’s wharf had a few large sailboats, a ferry, a tug pushing a barge and a huge cruise ship – all within yards of each other. Both of us were impressed with Portland. It had a pleasant energy and plenty of interesting shops, yet not a feeling of dealing with a crowd, even though two monstrously huge cruise ships were sitting in port.

Just to burn off a few of the calories from bakery number one, we visited the Portland Observatory. It is 85 feet tall, built on a city hill in 1807. It has survived four city fires, a number of hurricanes, a period of neglect, and has been reinforced twice. At each of the six corners, an 85-foot log supports the building. These were logs reserved by the British for ship-building, but eventually used for the tower. The foundation is built on the flat ground, with huge boulders built into the base to anchor it from the wind.

We learned it was built by a certain enterprising Captain Moody. Portland has a good harbor, but also an unusual challenge. To get to the harbor from the Atlantic, the ships must pass several islands. That is not a problem in itself. But if you are in Portland and wish to see which ships are coming in, the islands block your view. My finger is pointing to the location of the observatory on this map. You can see the islands which block the view to the Atlantic, in the lower right corner of the map.

During the 19^th century, when there was no communication between a ship and land, it was helpful to know when a ship was approaching. It could take a week to unload a ship, which meant dock space and hired men must be available. If a ship’s owner knew one of his ships was coming in, he could make arrangements for unloading before it reached the dock.

Moody charged each ship owner $5 a year to watch for his ships coming in. Each ship had its own unique flag, which Moody watched for from his tower. The illustration shows the various flags. When he saw a ship approaching, he notified the ship’s owner. When a ship was approaching whose owner had not paid him the $5 sum, he posted a flag which indicated the type of ship arriving, such as a frigate or a pirate ship! He also charged 12.5 cents to anyone who wished to climb his tower. 

We paid more than 12.5 cents to climb the tower – and were rewarded with a bird’s eye view of Portland. We could see the islands which block the view of incoming ships, the ships over at the wharf we had seen earlier, the swampy back bay area, and all the housing stock.

 Back at Miss Marshmallow we heated up the rest of the soup for our lunch, then packed her up to drive. We drove west... into fall.