We took a quick trip down the coast of Maine to central coastal Maine. A trip down Hwy 1 takes you across the Penobscot Narrows Bridge near Bucksport then down to the port cities of Belfast, Camden, Rockport and Rockford. I never met a port full of boats that I didn’t love!

These towns sport amazing harbors that have a variety of services.

• Belfast has huge boat yards as well as a great harbor walk right down at the waterfront.
• Camden is very popular and busy due to it’s quaintness, but it was really too busy for us other than a little stop to view the port. It was also one of the few places that had a restaurant open for lunch on a Tuesday.
• Both Rockport and Rockland housed lime kilns that much of the timber from the Schoodic Peninsula was hauled to in the mid 1800s. This timber fueled the lime kilns that made lime for cement that was used in the building of NYC.
• Rockport is home to the Peter Ralston Photography Gallery for those of you who follow Heather Cox Richrdson. She often uses his photos of Maine on her day off.
• Rockford has a breakwater granite rock breakwater pier that is close to a mile long. We started noticing that high tide brings the water right up to the top of those granite rocks!
• The Penobscot Narrows area with Bucksport on the far side of the banks was a key location during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. So Fort Knox was built during the mid-1800s to protect access to this area, which only saw any presence of troops during the Civil War. The Penobscot Narrows Bridge was errected in 2006 replacing an older historic bridge. The greatest thing about this bridge is that one of the towers has an elevator to the top for great views of the area.