Joan and I spent the past week visiting Monhegan Island, Maine. We spent a weekend on Monhegan almost twenty years ago and said that we should return for a longer visit sometime. I guess that ‘sometime’ was last week!
We got an early start on Saturday (the 18th) for the drive to Port Clyde; we did not want to miss the ferry. We arrived in plenty of time to have a leisurely lunch and wander the village of Port Clyde a bit before boarding the boat. The weather for the trip was good… a bit of roll but nothing too bad.
Upon arriving on the Island, we left our duffel bags to be trucked up to the place we rented for the week and hiked way up the hill to the Daniel Stevens cottage, our temporary abode. The cottage is the last house on Burnt Head Road. The road continues as a foot trail to Burnt Head after the cottage.
Daniel Stevens was a keeper of both the Mannana Island fog signal station and the Monhegan Island light at different times, but as far as we can tell, he never lived in the cottage that now bears his name.
We spent sometime settling in before taking a short walk and then heading back to the village for dinner.
After breakfast on Sunday we took a hike on some of the many trails and arrived back at the cottage for a late-ish lunch just before the rain started. After lunch we relaxed and by dinnertime the rain had stopped and we hoofed it down the hill for dinner. We kept up this schedule for the rest of the week… morning hike, lunch at the cottage, afternoon rest and relaxation, and evening village stroll with dinner. Very delightful!
The weather for the rest of the week was perfect. Highs in the low sixties, lows in the upper fifties and generally clear skies. The fair weather was not the best for landscape photography… bluebird skies and harsh contrast but I managed.
Speaking of photography… I made 1,587 exposures over the week. But don’t worry, I’m not going to show you all of them. I have uploaded ninety-five images (about 6% of the total) that I will show in this and subsequent posts.
Here is an introductory set of photos made pier-to-pier; Port Clyde to Monhegan. The last photo in this series (of a window in the shed on the Monhegan pier) duplicates a photo I made on our first visit. Twenty years ago, their was a broken pane in the window. I was glad to see that it had been repaired!!!
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The second set of photos were made while ‘out and about’ in the village of Monhegan. The village makes up about one-third of the area on the island. The remaining two-thirds of the island is undeveloped conserved land, mostly forest.
The first three photos in this set deserve a bit of explanation. Manana Island is lies a few hundred feet to the west of Monhegan Island; the channel between the islands makes a nice protected harbor. Manana was once the site of a Coast Guard fog signal station. The fog signal was initially a hand struck bell that was eventually replaced with a air powered horn before being abandoned. Manana Island now has a single house, the remains of the fog signal station and a herd of sheep and goats.
I made a number of (OK… way too many) photos of both the fog signal station shed and the solitary tree seen here. I am not sure why they fascinate me but they do!
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Many more photographs to come over the next several days. Stay tuned…
Excellent. It’s been years since I was on Monhegan, so I will enjoy your visit there.
Comment by Pat Nelson — 27 June 2022 @ 10:19 PM
My original posting was replaced by my update.
Loved the architectural shots of the barns and houses. Lots of great shots when you return in 2042!
Can’t wait to see the rest of the keepers.
Cheryl and I spent a long weekend on Isle au Haut off the Maine coast. We took the mailboat out to it.
Comment by Joe Kennedy — 28 June 2022 @ 7:42 AM