Sunday, August 14th– Pretty day today, not much wind and roofers are still here working. Our first guests up today are the group from the S/V Aurora 2 (the catamaran that came in late yesterday afternoon). They wanted a tour and I was ready to share what I know about the island and the Tower. It was great during the tour as I asked them to help me with my pronunciation of the lighthouse in southern France where they installed the first Fresnel (remember it’s French so it’s pronounced Fruh-nel) lens and the name of the company that made Seguin’s lens – Henry-LaPaute. It was very helpful! Then they stopped into the museum and gift shop and all the ladies bought some swag. This is one of the most fun parts of the job, meeting people from all over and learning what brought them to Seguin. As I’ve mentioned before, we can’t always see boats as they are coming into the Cove, but if they head east up the coast, we can. The picture on the right is them sailing away.
Today was an exceptional day in the Tower for rainbows created by the prisms. Here’s a few shots of them including Larson, Ethan’s oldest son. He looks like his face has been painted! They came to the island today with some friends for a day of fun and some lobsters down by the boat house.
Here’s two more shots. My favorite one is the one on the right. The reflection is as the light shone through the last step up to the upper inside catwalk. What has been interesting is to see how the prisms have changed over the season as the timing and location of the sun has moved.
This was probably one of our busiest days as we had 60+ guests today. Scott & Mary from yesterday came back up to walk some trails, a couple of peeps from Brunswick, 3 gentleman from Bath heading to Boothbay, a kayak group of 8, and FOSILS member Chris, wife Sarah and 2 friends! Just to name a few! Here’s a pic of Steve up on the outside catwalk with some tour goers. Oh and hey check out the new roof! Looking pretty good!
Well, it’s about 1:00 and we decided to walk down to the Cove to see what the situation looks like. Here’s some pics of the Cove, Ethan and group enjoying the deck and the kids swimming!
Next, we had a group of 5 waiting for a tour, then a family on the catwalk and the youngest in his rainbow swim trunks with a prism rainbow!
When the last group came back down to the Cove, their boat came in to pick them up as they didn’t have a dinghy!
Still more guests! We had a group of 4 young women and one of them was our 1000th guest. Steve said she won a fly swatter! However, she wasn’t allowed to keep it! We did have a couple more groups of two come up to check out the lighthouse, gift shop and the museum.
The roofers have decided to head back as the weather is not looking the best for tomorrow and a few of them have other commitments. Mahala, was teaching herself to learn guitar and Steve just had to check out her guitar since he didn’t bring his to the island.
Back to the house for dinner prep and to see what the sunset was going to look like. It was beautiful, Mt Washington and the right mix of light and clouds. Here are a couple of pictures over the span of 20 mins. You always take more than you need but you never know how the sky will change and you have to grab them all! Then a couple come up the trail, he was Richard but I missed her name. She was an amateur photographer was coming up to photograph the sunsets.
Monday, August 15th – Beautiful morning, can already feel there is a touch of fall in the air. It’s a tiny bit cooler and crisp. Wind coming out of the NE. Time to walk to the Cove and see who stayed over and how many moorings are open.
Spent part of the day getting ready for our friends coming Thursday and Colin (our youngest son) is coming Friday. We needed to go through our menu plan, check towels and sheets to make sure we’re all ready to roll. Then I made a few calls and texts to catch up with a few peeps. Steve went down to weed whack around the tram trestle area down by the Cove. That area gets shade so the grass continues to slowly grow in that area and then around the garden area near the house.
The afternoon picked up a little. Although I didn’t take many pics. We had a mom plus 4 young adults (aka not kids) and a group of 10 which included Andrew from MITA plus friends and family.
Around 5:30, we did have a group of four come up – Ryan and Jess from Arrowsic, ME and Kate and TJ from Oregon. After their tour it was on to dinner and sunsets. Tonight, we had swordfish, asparagus and doctored up leftover rice with sesame seeds! It was very good! And here’s a sunset through sunset bench. Just another beautiful evening.
Tuesday, August 16th – Well another shore day! Sometimes they come up quickly and other times it seems like it’s been a long time. Of course, we can usually tell because we can see the back of the fridge! Down to the Cove by 6:45 to uncover the dinghy, bring the oars down from the boathouse along with all our bags, computer stuff, laundry and water jugs. Oars you say? Yep, the saying in Maine goes “No one can steal your dinghy if you don’t have oars on it.” Got to love that Maine humor! While getting ready, I realized I had left my water shoes at the laundromat!!! Guess I was a little distracted last week. I take them and my water socks off to let them dry outside the laundromat while I’m doing my laundry. Oh well, I’m sure Amy has them!
Our boat ride in was very smooth as there wasn’t much wind or swell. It was approaching low tide but luckily, we still had enough water for Ethan to drop us off on the floating dock. We stopped again at Café Crema for my chai latte tea. It’s yummy for sure, but a little too much caffeine for me. I keep a running “things to do on the computer” list so that when I get to the laundromat, I can be efficient with my computer work. Well not this time! After I left the laundromat, I realized that I was supposed to copy the blog text over to the website then I would just have the pictures left to load….. Oh well. While I was there, Steve ran to Walmart to return an item and I gave him a few things to pick up there that would likely be cheaper than Shaw’s. He also stopped at Plants Seafood (the fish store) and picked up some tuna and salmon – oooooweeee eatin’ good on the island this week! After the laundromat, we headed to do our grocery shopping as we were meeting Cyndy for lunch in town. Since we came in on Tuesday, I brought in items for her and she had some more things for the gift shop. But on the way, we decided to take a couple of pictures of this very cool old tree we go by every week on Lincoln St. We looked it up on my phone and it was a Copper Beech. Steve thinks it was at least 4 feet in diameter. It is huge!!! Oh, and yes Amy had grabbed my shoes and socks last week, phew!
Arrived at Shaw’s and we needed to be crisp so we could leave plenty of time for lunch. In the grocery store we noticed a few women in similar shirts with three VERY full grocery carts. Turns out they were from a yacht and making the food run for a charter starting the next day. We met Cyndy for lunch at Bruno’s Wood Fire Pizza. We all got some pizza. We got the same pizza we did last time, but boy they are yummy! It was fun to meet someone for lunch! We also needed to swing by Garden Jacquelyn’s to pick up some veggies she had ready for us. Before we headed to her house though, I ran into the bookstore on the corner and picked up a little book for Ruth about “Living on an Island.” It was very cute story and some of the parts were similar to living on Seguin. Ruth was napping when we got there, but Jacquelyn said she would give it to her first thing…
On our way back to Popham, we had a little extra time, so we took Parker Head Rd. It’s even more rural than our normal route 209. It weaved in and around these little coves and houses. Very pretty. Tried to take a few pics as there were lots of cute little houses right on the water but most didn’t come out too good. Here’s a picture of one that looks like it was just refurbished. You can see the water directly behind the house.
When we came to the last turn, we decided to go straight on to Fort Baldwin Rd, which takes us by two homes and brings us to a little park that has some information about the original Fort we learned about at the Maine’s First Ship exhibit, Fort St George built in 1607. The signage explaining about the Fort was is sad shape and difficult to read. Here are two pictures – first one is of a memorial rock about “the Virginia”, Maine’s first ship, the second is looking back at Fort Popham from across the cove and the third one is beyond Fort Popham is Bay Point (actually part of Georgetown), which used to be a fishing village.
I noticed again that the temperature had dropped over 10 degrees during the drive from Bath to Popham! We arrived and Ethan was at the floating dock – yay!
We arrived at our Cove and there was a group leaving the island. But we also noticed that the volunteers didn’t look like they were coming out with their gear. Turns out they opted to stay until the roofers were finished for the day. Some bad weather is coming in tomorrow which is why we went in today.
Well, that’s all the notes I have for today.
Wednesday, August 17th – Rainy day and the wind is coming! I have three things on my list today – blog, paint sign and finish up cleaning etc. for our friends Bryan and Mary arriving tomorrow and Colin on Friday. We had a light breakfast and made some lobster salad with some leftover lobster from Sunday’s lobster cook at the boat house. I sat and picked through some of the bigger bodies, a skill my Dad taught me when I was a child.
As you can see in the pics above, there are pretty large swells at Cobblestone Beach and I’ve never seen surf like that at Seguin Ledges (the pic on the right). I’ve finished my other tasks and decided to bring down to the Whistle House some leftover roofing wood and pull the nails out so it can be used for something else, that’s just the island way. Once something arrives on the island, it pretty much stays there!
Decided to have lunch, made lobster rolls for lunch – actually quite yummy! I don’t have any other pics or items to share other than dinner that was our tofu sausage crumbles in red sauce over pasta (it’s really chickpea pasta).
Thursday, August 18th – Weather still unsettled, foggy and a little chilly. Here’s a picture as I was walking up from the Whistle House around 8:30 a.m. This morning Bryan and Mary, friends from back in VA, arrive this morning on “Gratitude.” I ran around doing the last-minute things like getting a few flowers, final clean of our bathroom, etc. As I was walking back up to the house trying to find a few island flowers I saw these little yellow ones that look similar to dandelions. But every flower I looked at had one or 2 ants crawling around on them. So, I cut a few and jiggled them all to get the ants off! There is still a little night shade (the little purple and yellow flowers that I’ve mentioned before) so I cut a few of those. They were supposed to leave 5 Islands at 9:00 but due to weather, they didn’t leave till noon. Here they come in on the boat!
While I was walking on the beach, still in search of my tiniest claw, I found this one. We helped them carry their stuff up the trail. They did an awesome job keeping it to a minimum! We walked up the trail, gave them an orientation to the house, the composting toilet, what goes in trash, burnables, recycle, returnables, etc. They got settled, had a quick bite to eat and then we headed out the North Trail to pick some blackberries and check out the view. It was cloudy, etc. but at least it wasn’t raining. So here are the pictures from the North Trail and the view back towards the Cove.
As we turn the last corner, the Tower come back into view, it’s definitely a feeling of coming home. We also noticed a large Coast Guard vessel, that appeared to be working on a navigational aid (not sure if it was a ‘nun’ or a ‘can’). We all sat on the porch to regroup a little and chat.
We did have a chance to sit a bit, then a group three came up the trail and Steve gave them a tour. Notice the flyswatter in her hand! Those little buggers (the biting fly’s that arrive with a Northerly wind) were annoying. I did have a guest once that just used a branch to shoo them away and I thought that was a good idea…
Picture to the left is the view west and picture to right is view east around 6:00. At least the clouds are breaking up and tomorrow looks like it will be a nice day. Tonight’s dinner was chicken marsala with peas accompanied by roasted yellow and green squash (from our Seguin garden) along with some Vidalia onions. Nothing like a toasty warm dinner when there is a nip in air.
When we finished dinner, Bryan and Mary had brought us a new dice game. It’s called 10 dice! It was pretty easy to learn, a few unique rules and it was lots of fun to play. In a nutshell, you roll 10 dice and decide, based on points, which dice to keep. Some dice have a point value for one di, others you need three of the same di to score. For example, one of the #1 di is worth 100 points, but you need three #2 dice which can score 200 points. Anyway, we picked up most of the rules in a few minutes and we were off and running! We played a few games before deciding to call it a night. Everyone had been up early.
Friday, August 19th – Ah, another beautiful day and here’s my Cove picture which tells you everything except the temperature! There was a nice breeze and it was warm. We noticed that our Canada geese family of five had made it up the trail and was enjoying some dry grass from the lawn. This was the first time we noticed them up top! This was a little after 8:00 am. I went up in the Tower to see if I needed to sweep and opened the door to the catwalk as it seemed a little warm inside. As I opened the door, I saw a dog come up the main trail and that was all the geese needed to see. They immediately took off! (you might have to look hard at the right picture, but the 5 geese are flying to the right)
Just when I returned to the front porch, we had our first visitors! We recognized two of them Peter & his wife Dorothy from Portland, they were here in July, and today they brought some friends, Wojtek and Renee, from Scarborough with them! Fun group. Gave them a tour.
Shortly after that tour was complete, we had Mike and Melissa come up again. They had come up late yesterday afternoon and did some exploring, but today they wanted a tour. We chatted with them quite a bit as they travel in an RV in the winter time and in a boat in the summer time! Just like people ask us a lot of questions about this Lighthouse gig, we asked them a lot of questions about their unique situation. Another group of two came up, Mike & Dino. Mike was from ME, but Dino was from MA. They too had come up yesterday but decided to wait for a nicer day for a tour. So, I gave the four of them a tour. All four really enjoyed the tour and asked questions, etc. By the end, they were swoping information as Mike kept his boat in the same marina Mike and Melissa were going to that day. Mike wasn’t going to be there so he offered his mooring to them. That’s just how most boaters are, helping each other out like that!
Decided to take a walk down and see what’s going on in the Cove. Well l got to the Donkey House and guess who was there! The family of 5 Canada geese. Guess they just fly around the island and decided to walk up from the beach!
Here’s the Cove around 1:00 only a couple of boats. I recognized one of them as Mike and Melissa’s, so I guess they haven’t left yet. Not sure who is in the blue boat. Then here is a picture looking towards the NE, clouds and the view are so pretty and just like sunsets, every day is very different so you have to capture them all and check them out later!
Well, we seemed to have a break in the action, we opted to have a quick lunch with Bryan and Mary. They took off for their own hike and it was the perfect time to make a sign for Colin as he is coming in this afternoon. His trip here was a super early flight from Richmond, VA to Boston. Then a bus to the Portland, ME transportation center, then another bus to Bath, ME. Cyndy was to pick him up and bring him to Georgetown to take the 5 Islands Boat Tours (http://www.fiveislandsboattours.com), with Captains Cal & Katrina, over to the island at 3:00 finally arriving here around 4:00! I get tired just typing it up. It’s not always easy to get to Seguin, but it’s always worth it! Cyndy had to go to Georgetown anyway for some prep work for the fundraiser on August 27th. And as with any task on the island, you make due with what you have. What do you think of my sign???
I came out of the house to head back down to the Cove to meet Colin and guess who made their way up the main trail again! Our geese family of five! Well, guess they like the grass! From up top here, we could see that Cal & Katrina are headed over! Yay!
Got down to the Cove and climbed up onto the rocks by the boat house so I could hold my sign! As I was looking down to make sure I was on secure footing, I saw these little amoeba looking things that were jiggling in a little puddle by my feet. I zoomed in and took a picture. Not sure what type of bugs these are but in a few days there is going to be a ton of them! Yippee, the boat has arrived!
How fun is this!!!! I’m am so psyched that his class schedule (he is in graduate school for his doctorate of Physical Therapy) allowed him to make the trip as well as he was up for the plane-bus-bus-automobile-boat trip to get here! Cal & Katrina came up to hang out a bit with us before they headed back. Then Steve gave Bryan and Colin a brief tour of the Tower.
Tonight is lobsters night, but we have learned to not have the meal ready when it’s sunset time! That has happened to us so many times! So this time we waited for a beautiful sunset then went in to cook. Then all of a sudden, we noticed so many people coming up the trail and they all had cameras!!! Steve talked to the lead guy and they had kayaked over and wanted to know if it was ok to camp! They had reached out to check with Cyndy as well too. Sure we said… Can’t believe I didn’t get a pic of all of them. I think there was 6 or 7 of them. Then another 3 came up to watch sunset, it was Bill and Yolanda (who have been here before during our watch) with their nephew! Quite the crowd!
We played 10-dice again and taught Colin the game. It’s great because you can play it with as many people as you want and it’s easy enough to pick up the rules your first game. Thanks Mary and Bryan for a great gift!
Saturday, August 20th – Well, another beautiful day here on Seguin. However, before I share my Cove picture, I have to share this one! I walked into our bathroom this morning and noticed a spot on the composting toilet. Thinking I needed to clean off a dead fly or something from yesterday, I got a little closer and it was two ladybugs making more ladybugs! How crazy is that!
Today, Bryan and Mary need to leave and begin their journey back to Virginia. We walked down to the Cove to see them off. We also noticed a 1st year seagull over in the seaweed, pecking away at a crab. Now you can tell how difficult it is to see them as they really do blend into the surrounding area. Guess that is all part of their survival instincts and genetic make-up. They won’t look like the white and gray seagulls we are used to seeing until they are 3! Bryan and Mary climbed into the dinghy and waved goodbye. They were very thankful for the invite to come experience this very cool island and Mary was especially helpful in taking care of their linens, etc. They had hiked all the trails and maximized their stay. Safe travels guys!
Today we had 30+ visitors over the course of the day, not crazy but a steady stream. Colin joined in on one of my tours. The group he joined had four kids. It’s fun to see their eyes light up when they see all the rainbows from the sunlight reflecting through the prisms. Here’s a couple of pics
Next, we had a family of three, they were very excited with the tour!
The next group was the Connelly family with four generations that has been coming to Bay Point (an area near Popham Beach but in Georgetown), since 1921! The pic on the left is the generations picture and on the right is the whole group that came out. Again, they loved the tour and were very excited to have everyone on the island!
Next was Cathy and Scott from Phippsburg. A very nice couple enjoying their visit to Seguin. They plan to stay over on the moorings and we enjoyed a lengthy conversation in the museum about all sorts of topics including house sitting and a book recommendation – “The Light Between the Oceans” by L. M. Stedman. Another one to add to your reading list!
We decided to walk to the Cove to check out the moorings to see if we’d have enough time to walk from the Cove to Cobblestone Beach. Only Cathy and Scott’s boat was in the Cove so off we went (Steve, Colin and me).
The following 8 pictures are from that walk. It is a different walk every time as there is no set path. You have to climb over rocks, etc. so the route is unique to that day. It is an amazing geological experience as there are so many different rocks. The tide was coming in so it was especially fun with the waves crashing on the rocks. Colin (and his older brother Gary coming in a week) love to walk on the rocks and build cairns. Check out the one Colin built plus we saw a few seals pop their heads up in the ocean too! Just before the end we noticed a quartz vein in the rock and finally we ended up back by the Donkey House. A quick trip down to the Cove to take a dip in the Gulf of Maine to cool off. Not me though, someone has to take the pictures!
Back in Cove, no new boats, so we shouldn’t have any new visitors until tomorrow. Back up the trail for sunset, then dinner. Sunset is already starting to occur earlier than a few weeks ago.
Here’s our dinner pic tonight. Remember we picked up some tuna at Plants Seafood on our day ashore? Steve always does an excellent job of perfectly cooking the tuna! We had roasted sweet potatoes and sautéed green beans with cranberries, candied pecans and some feta. We opted to play some more of the 10-dice game for a little bit along with some family time conversation!
See you next week! Keep checking back as I still have a couple more posts to go!
We loved the tour- as many lighthouses as we have visited in 20+ years of RVing then boating yours was the best- with the most history- Thank you! Also enjoyed the hike from Cobblestone Beach to the Cove- lovely rocks. In real time (Sept 25) we have just completed our 2 months in Maine and pulled back into Southport Marine in Portland- met by none other than Mike and his buddy- pulling his boat for the season. He recognised us from Seguin- you make great connections.