Kurt & Virginia's Travels: Three Day Road Trip to Bath, Maine

Coastal Maine Botanical Garden

This 275 acre botanical garden is in Boothbay, Maine. This was a gem in our AAA book, so it was a must see. We drove the 100 miles to Boothbay on Monday morning, and spent the rest of the day walking around these extensive gardens and forest trails before checking into our hotel in Brunswick, Maine.

Forest Trail "Trolls", Guardians of the Seeds

The artist, Thomas Dambo, from Denmark is world renowned for his troll art. There are 5 giant trolls scattered throughout the forest trails.

Alliums, in the garlic family, are in full bloom.

Maine Maritime Museum

This is another gem in the AAA book. After a good nights sleep, we drove nine miles to Bath, Maine, to tour the Maritime Museum. The 20 acre Museum, is the site of a 19th century shipyard where large wooden sailing ships were constructed and launched. There are five original shipyard buildings. With the weather unpredictable, we purchased a two day pass which included all exhibits and a boat tour on the Kennebec River.

The museum had a number of displays and movies about the historic shipyard and lighthouses in the area.

Vintage Tugboat Pilothouse

What remains of the 1851 American Clipper Ship, Snow Squall, built in South Portland. It was damaged in 1864 going around Cape Horn and then abandoned in Port Stanley, Falkland Islands. This is the only remains of an American clipper ship in existence.

The original Mill & Joinery Shop and Paint & Treenail Shop along with the rebuilt Blacksmith Shop were part of the Percy and Small Shipyard, 1896 - 1920.

The Victorian home of the shipbuilding family, Donnell.

One building was dedicated to the Maine lobstering industry.

The Schooner Mary E, constructed in Bath in 1906. Originally built as a fishing vessel, the Mary E has served many functions through the years. She is the oldest wooden vessel built on the Kennebec River that is still sailing. She takes passengers sailing 3 days a week. It is now fitted with a Cummins Diesel Engine.

The next day, we returned to finish touring the exhibits as well as take a boat tour down the Kennebec River.

Picture of the remains of the Percy Small Shipyard along with the life-size steel structure of the largest wooden schooner ever built in America, The Wyoming. When Percy and Small Shipyard completed construction of the Wyoming in 1909, the vessel had six masts reaching 177 feet in height. The ship carried a payload of up to 6600 tons of coal along the eastern coast until she sank in a storm off Cape Cod in 1924.

Doubling Point Lighthouse at a bend in the Kennebec River.

Fiddler's Reach Fog Bell stands between the Doubling Point Lighthouse and the Kennebec Range Lights

Kennebec Range Lights.

As ships travel up the Kennebec River, the captains align with the lights to ensure that the ship is traveling down the center of the river.

The boat tour included water viewing of the Bath Iron Works (General Dynamics) one of two American shipyards that build surface combatant vessels for the U.S. Navy. The large blue vessel carries the destroyer into the middle of the river before being sunk to allow the destroyer to float freely away. After the destroyer is launched, the blue drydock is then raised from the bottom of the river and moved back to the shipyard for future use.