Today we ventured to Fort Knox in the town of Bucksport. This is not the fort with all of the gold. That’s the one in Kentucky. This one is on the Penobscot River and is one of the best-preserved military fortifications due to it being built from granite rock. It was a cool misty morning to walk around and learn some local history. One fun fact was that they spent all this time building a very scary fortress with the capability of 135 cannons, and then it was barely used and never staffed. But it sure looks formidable!
https://www.fortknoxmaine.com/fort-knox-history
Maine was repeatedly involved in northeast border disputes with British Canada before they became a state in 1820. As we learned yesterday, this area was invaded and occupied by the British during the American Revolution and the War of 1812. An area with rich history!
Next we traveled 30 minutes up to Bangor. The city name is pronounced BANG- gor for those that thought it was Banger. We even watched a few news clips about it because the residents are so used to visitors butchering their city name. Seriously… https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/-we-are-bangor---residents-explain-city-s-proper-pronunciation-396488259779
So the town was cute, but small. Only 33k people live here and I was thinking it would be a thriving downtown waterfront area. Especially on July 4th weekend. Nope. Pretty quiet and only a few shops open. We stopped to check out Stephen King’s house because he’s the local celebrity and he’s from here! The street is clearly lined with other magnificent homes but we were surprised that one just two doors down and fully remodeled was only 960k on Zillow. Todd is an avid reader of all of his books and enjoyed stopping to snap a photo.
We grabbed what I thought would be a light lunch at a bagel shop but it turned out that their fresh made bagels were quite filling. Apparently Bagel Central is known for their bagels and has won contests for best breakfast. We were stuffed afterward and never took a single photo.
We walked around the surrounding square and stumbled upon a statue of a guy named Hannibal Hamlin and we didn’t believe the engraving that stated he was a United States VP. Low and behold, Wikipedia proved us wrong. He was a VP under Abraham Lincoln! You sure learn a lot while traveling!
We also saw the gorgeous Bangor Public Library as we walked back to the car. I can only imagine what it looks like inside, but alas, it’s Sunday!
As it began to drizzle some more, we decided that we had seen all there was to see and we were ready to head back to the cottage for what was looking like a quiet rainy afternoon. One stop at the local grocery store for provisions for dinner, and of course all sorts of things that weren’t on the list…we made it back to our wet little cottage in the woods. Snuggled up on the couch or in a chair, we all grabbed our books, phones, switches, etc and settled into some relaxing.
Naps. Laundry. Work. Everything was handled and taken care of this afternoon. We all did whatever we needed to do. It was nice to just relax and prepare for our trip tomorrow - 🇨🇦 We had soup and cozied up on the couch since it continued to rain all day.
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