For a good description of the Road Scholar (Elderhostel) trip in Brownsville, see this post by Jeanne Heuer.
I recently spent two weeks birding in the Corpus Christi and Brownsville areas, where I logged around 120 species. Here are some of my best pictures.
More to come–
About 75 years before the Army started to build a new training camp near West Point, Kentucky that would be named in honor of Henry Knox, the Army began building a massive fortification on the Penobscot River in Maine that bore the name Fort Knox. Knox was the Continental Army’s chief of artillery during the Revolutionary War whose retirement home Montpelier in Thomaston, Maine I described in an earlier post.
Control of the Penobscot River, almost directly west of the southern tip of Nova Scotia, made it important to both the British and the Americans. It was the scene for the fledgling break-away colonies first major naval defeat in 1779, and the British regained control during the War of 1812. Thus, it was a logical location to place one of about 40 forts started as part of the Third System of defense in 1844. Construction on Fort Knox continued for almost 25 years, but as the Civil War drew to a close, concerns about a sea-born invasion waned and the fort’s barracks were never completed.
Fort Knox is a massive granite-walled fortification with mounts for 135 cannon, some in batteries and some in casemates. A diagram showing the layout of the fort can be found here.
The largest number of troops ever stationed at the fort was 575 when a Connecticut regiment lived outside the walls in tents for a month during the Spanish-American War. During the Civil War 20 to 54 troops were garrisoned at the fort. For the best part of fifty years, after construction stopped in 1869, a non-commissioned officer served as the sole guardian of the fort.
This will probably be my last post about my trip to Maine, so let me close with one of those quintessential Maine seaport views. This one was taken from the roof of the fort’s casemates.
In 1931 the Waldo-Hancock Suspension Bridge began carrying Route 1 traffic over the Penobscot River.
Now on the list of National Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks, this bridge was one of two concurrent bridge projects to first use prestressed wire rope strand cables. It was also the first suspension bridge built with the Vierendeel truss.
In 2006 a new bridge was completed.
The new Penobscot Narrows Bridge is the only observatory bridge in the Western Hemisphere and the tallest in the world at 420 feet.
The obelisk towers may remind you of the Washington Monument. That’s because they were designed to pay homage to the local granite industry which harvested granite from nearby Mount Waldo for the construction of the monument.
From the observatory one gets a bird’s eye view of nearby Fort Knox, which I’ll discuss in my next post.
The new bridge does have its problems though. One day I saw an article in the Bangor Daily News about how the elevator tends to stop working–especially in high winds, and each 911 call costs the local community $1,000. On October 10th, the elevator got stuck twice–once in the morning and once in the afternoon.
Before I reached Acadia, I tackled a coastal “summit” in Camden Hills State Park–a trail with a vertical rise of 700′. It turned out to be one of my most difficult hikes in Maine–mostly because it was my first and I hadn’t yet adapted to Maine’s route finding clues. It was also the trail with the steepest gradient, but that just meant a lot of rocks and tree roots on a very overused, under-maintained trail.
The views from the top of Maiden Cliff of Lake Megunticook were beautiful, but the leaves had not yet changed very much.
A wooden cross marked the spot where an eleven-year-old girl fell to her death in 1864.
Not all of the peaks in the park must be reached via your feet; there’s a paved road to the top of Mt. Battie from which it’s possible to see the outline of Mount Desert Island and Camden Harbor.
I know nothing about mushrooms, but in the fall it’s hard to travel a forest trail without spotting one. So here’s a gallery of fungi from the trails of Maine.
The obvious reason to visit this park is the West Quoddy Head Light, which is east of East Quoddy Head Light located on Campobello Island.
Sticking out into the Bay of Fundy, West Quoddy Head is the easternmost point of land in the United States. Just off shore is Grand Manan Island, a part of New Brunswick. We hiked a loop that began with coastal views and ended with a boardwalk into a bog.
If you’re not familiar with the term apacheta, check out my previous blog post on apachetas in the Andes.
As we headed inland, we encountered stairs of tree roots.
In October one doesn’t expect to find many wildflowers blooming except for an aster or two, so this renegade was a rarity.
Along the circular boardwalk around the bog there were numerous pitcher plants, lichens, mosses, dwarf trees, and berry bushes.
One day we went off with our passports in hand to cross the border into Canada and hike in the steps of FDR. The trail to Liberty Point was a short 3.2km one-way, but it was filled with views.
While on this hike we saw at least six bald eagles soaring overhead at one cliffside view point, and several seals.
After returning via a forest path, we visited the 34-room cottage where Eleanor and Franklin came with their young family to spend the summer hiking and sailing. Franklin had spent most summers while growing up on the island at the cottage his parents built when he was just a toddler. Their neighbor included a provision in her will that offered her cottage to Franklin’s mother at a bargain price of $5,000. Eleanor and Franklin with their growing young family used the cottage every year from 1909 to 1921 when FDR came down with polio after arriving on the island. He only returned three times after that.
Franklin added a new wing in 1915 to accommodate his growing family.
Boot Head and Hamilton Cove are in units of the Maine Coast Heritage Trust. The trail at Boot Head starts with a trip through a bog,
proceeds to a stony beach on the shore of Boot Cove
where I spied the closest thing to a hoodoo on my entire trip to Maine,
and then climbed the cliffs to circle Boot Head.
and an opportunity for a group photo.
Our hike in Shackford Head State Park differed from the others, as this headland is in Cobscook Bay close to Eastport rather than on the Gulf of Maine near Lubec.
In this sheltered bay one can see fish farms where Atlantic salmon destined for our dining pleasure are raised. On another day, when we kayaked by the farm, we could actually see the fish jumping.