Summer Roadtrip Part IV A Foggy Doggy Story

That first foggy day lent an entirely different perspective to a summer coastal day. After breakfast we headed out to Rockport.

Rockport was smaller than I expected but it had a pretty harbor. For several years now I have been watching an osprey nest online so I was eagerly watching out for osprey when in Maine. Here in the front left corner I can see a platform that in some earlier year has perhaps hosted a nest but alas, not this year.

We moved the car further down so we could walk around the harbor area. Right away we were highly entertained by watching this dog - the one on the right. Stay with me now while I tell you the story. At first we watched a couple of people throw a stick repeatedly into the water. The dog would jump in, retrieve the stick and swim back to the little jetty and drop it for them to throw again. We assumed the dog belonged to them. Well, no it did not. As they left the jetty I chatted briefly with them and they did not know whose dog it was but it clearly loved this game.

 Unable to resist we took a turn at entertaining Dog. Step 1; throw the stick.

 Step 2; Dog has jumped in, retrieved the stick and is swimming back with it.

 Step 3; from lots of practice Dog knows where to come ashore.

 Step 4; good Dog, you found the stick for us.  Now after a number of these demonstrations of Dog's prowess we were a little afraid that we might be wearing Dog out so we said goodbye and left.

 Back on the road our next stop was at Rockland Harbor where we decided to take the 0.8 mile walk along the breakwater to see the Rockland Breakwater Light. When we started out we weren't sure if we would walk all the way because it was so foggy and 0.8 m is quite a walk in the fog and it would be 0.8m on the return journey too. But as you can see there were a number of folk doing the walk.

 We were distracted several times along the walk by cute little birds like this one. It had a preset distance which it kept between us. For each foot I got closer, it backed off by the same amount. And it was well camouflaged don't you think. When I kept still long enough it would pause and sip from little puddles.

 Finally we arrived at the end of the breakwater. Now the fog was even heavier. We could no longer see the land. There were foghorns going off as watercraft passed by making it quite spooky I have to say. This one above is the Sari Ann and, judging by the load, is a lobster fishing boat.

 The lighthouse itself was not one of the most picturesque we saw on our trip and there was nothing to make this a pretty photo. On a sunny day with a flag up the flagpole it would be. However, the point of a lighthouse is to keep watercraft safe in just the kind of weather condition that we experienced on our walk.

 The North Star approached with it's fog light shining brightly. "No, don't jump"  might be a good caption for the photo. Instead the two crewmen were just sitting down taking a break as they motored in to the harbor.

 A ferry passed by soon after we heard a really really loud horn. We heard the horns well before we saw what the horn belonged to.

 Eventually we started the long walk back.

And to finish off this post, I cannot resist going one over my usual bakers dozen of photographs. Photo 14 is another shot of Dog.