Vacation day 7 was another travel day. It's only about three hours from Portland up to Castine but I doubt we could ever do it in three hours. It takes us all day because there is so much to see along the coast of Maine!
Our first two stops were repeats for us, but they are special places and it had been four years since our last visit, so the boys didn't remember.
Our first stop was Fort William Henry in New Harbor on Pemaquid Point. We obviously love this fort because it bears the names of our two boys, in the right order.
They were so excited to visit their fort!
William and Henry in front of Fort William Henry.
Fort William Henry is actually a rebuilt part of one of three forts on Pemaquid Point. The first fort, Fort Charles, was a wooden building built in 1677 that fell to an Indian attack in 1689. Fort William Henry was built of stone on the same site in 1692, but fell just four years later when the French and Indians attacked. The final fortress, Fort Frederick, was built in 1729 and withstood two attacks before being decommissioned in 1759. It was dismantled in 1775 so the British could not use it during the Revolution.
The views from the top are just spectacular.
Gramma and Grampa love to explore too, and they hadn't been down on Pemaquid Point yet. We're so glad they joined us!
And here's a look back to our first visit to Fort William Henry in the summer of 2009. Henry was just 16 months old.
And now he's five!
We did find something new on this visit. Colonial Pemaquid was inhabited by the British from the 1620s onward, and this little house shows what the first inhabitants would have called home.
We learned how it was constructed,
and Henry found a broom to help keep it clean!
We spent some time in the little museum, and enjoyed the herb garden outside.
It is full of herbs and other plants that 17th-century settlers would have used for cooking and medicinal purposes.
The boys also got their Maine State Park passports and received their first stamp!
One last view from Colonial Pemaquid.
We drove just down to the end of the point to visit Pemaquid Point Lighthouse.
This was our third visit but the first time we went to the top! Will was finally tall enough, but Henry was just one inch too short, so he and I had to stay below.
We did enjoy beautiful views of the ocean, though.
Will was excited to climb to the top!
Henry and I are down on a bench looking up at Gene and Will!
After climbing to the top of the lighthouse, it was time for lunch. Will had his first lobster of the trip
and both boys enjoyed ice cream cones for a special treat.
And just for fun, we found the same rock we sat on four years ago so Gene could snap another photo.
Here we are today:
And in 2009:
And going back even further, here's Will on his first visit to Pemaquid back in August 2007. He had just turned one!
After Pemaquid, we continued our drive up the coast and made it to Camden Hills State Park, where we wanted to do a quick hike before arriving in Castine.
The park ranger directed us to a parking lot "for hikers," so we parked there and headed up the mountain!
It was a pretty day for a hike and we all had fun.
We even saw a little snake by the side of the trail.
Neither Gene nor I really paid much attention to the fact that there were multiple parking lots for hikers and we could have found a shorter hike, so we ended up hiking up Mt. Megunticook, which is the highest of the Camden Hills and the highest peak on the mainland at 1385 feet.
The entire 3-mile loop on a rocky path, over boulders and around mud, took us two hours. I have to give props to my boys because they did not complain once and in fact absolutely loved the hike and now are disappointed that we don't have mountains in east Texas. The view of Penobscot Bay was amazing and it was so worth the work to get to the top!
Two hours and 90ish flights of stairs (according to the Fitbit) later, we were back on the road to Castine, where Gene and Nancy had a delicious haddock dinner and birthday cake waiting for us.
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