PORTLAND, THE ONE IN MAINE

Interesting fact, the two founders of Portland, Oregon each wanted to name the town after his own home town.  The guy from Boston lost the coin toss.  

We started our trip with Road Scholar today.  We had an interesting lecture about the history of Portland, which has been burned to the ground at least three times.  Once by native peoples, once by the British, and once by idiots with fireworks celebrating the Fourth of July after the end of the civil war.  Eventually they started building things out of brick and granite.

.  It was once the home of a big shipbuilding industry, and prior to the revolutionary war, Maine supplied the masts for English ships.  And then of course, the lobster industry is the major thing today.  

Maine was also a stop on the Underground Railroad and because people from the south were escaping to Canada, used (warm) clothing was an important industry.

But today it's all about lobster. These are traps.  Years ago, trappers would get several lobsters in these traps every time they put them out. Today, they're lucky to get one.  

These buoys are attached to the traps, both so the fishermen know to whom they belong, and so they don't get lost.  If the ropes holding them break, the traps usually become ghost traps, sitting on the bottom of the ocean catching lobsters that eventually die of starvation and are replaced by other lobsters, and none of them make it to anybody's plate.  

We had a walking tour of the port area, and an afternoon tour on the open air trolley which included a lighthouse visit. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who lived near the spot our hotel stands today, used to walk out to this lighthouse and may have composed the poem that is excerpted on this monument here   (By the way, this seems like a very long walk to me, and we came over a mile long bridge that most likely was not here in Longfellow's day.  

Here are some random pictures from around the port:

We were going to go to the Portland Art Museum, which is right across the street from our hotel, but John has been feeling crummy today so we came home and took a nap -- he because he felt sick, me because I've been awake since 4:45 when the sun came up.  Anyway, by the time we were awake enough to go, the museum was closed.  Maybe when we come back.  

There's a possibility the aurora borealis may be visible tonight from Portland, but so far at 11:30 pm it hasn't made an appearance.  TV news has been tracking it, and I've gone up to the 11th floor where you can see the horizon, but no luck.  I think there's probably too much light pollution where we are, anyway.