Portland Bike Ride

September 15, 2013

A nice sunny day greeted us this morning so we had a nice breakfast on the porch and then, since we had been slugs for three days in a row, we decided to do a bike ride. We packed up and headed off to Portland and the "Bug Light".

The Portland Bug Light is a small lighthouse built in 1875.  It is made of curved cast-iron plates whose seams are disguised by six decorative Corinthian columns. Its design was inspired by the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens, an ancient Greek Monument. The local peeps nicknamed it the Bug Light because of its small size.

There is a very nice bicycle path that leaves from the Bug Light Park.  This is part of the ambitious Eastern Trail project which plans to build bike path from Maine to Florida.  The path is very well maintained and a nice ride through trees.  Eventually we left the path and headed over to the coast to see a couple of bigger lighthouses.  The roads are good, with very wide shoulders and the motorists were very courteous, even the woman who very carefully and slowly drove up alongside of me and then politely and slowly cut right in front of me to make a right turn around the corner.  She came within 1/2" of taking me out with her big 1950s era Oldsmobile.  And she smiled and gave me a friendly wave as she did this.  

So we rode along, enjoying the beautiful sunny weather and fresh air as we visited the Two Lights Lighthouse and also the Portland Head Lighthouse.  

When we returned to the Bug Light Park we checked out the memorial to the World War II shipbuilders, Rosie the Riveters, and read the history of the boat-building era in the Portland area.  There were good story boards and a replica of the prow of a Liberty Ship.  The Jerimiah O'Brien, housed in San Francisco now, was built here.  It is one of the last of the great Liberty Ships left and in 1994 it made a trip to France to Normandy Beach to commemorate D-Day.