826. Portland, Cumberland County (ME02)

Welcome to the other Portland! Neoclassicism, thy name is the Cumberland County Courthouse! But I must admit, the courthouse was secondary by the time we arrived. Making it to Portland was another of the ultimate goals of the trip. We immediately went to our target, Fort Williams Park and, more importantly …

… Portland Head Light, the oldest lighthouse in Maine. We began our work with the obvious EarthCache, devoted to the Cushing Formation.

Then we got to the important work: lunch! We stood in line for world-famous lobster rolls and then found a park bench in a beautiful grassy spot from which we could watch the ocean while we ate.

There’s something about looking out at the ocean, seeing it as it goes on for what seems like forever. At one point, the six of us were standing in a line, leaning on a railing, looking out at the sea. One of us (strangely enough, not me) piped up that we needed to get going because we had things to do, but it sure didn’t look like anyone would move. Eventually, the rest of us spoke and grunted approval at their statement.

Some of us had never even seen an ocean. Others had never seen the Atlantic. The rest had seen the Atlantic but never quite like this. Of course, we were there for caching purposes. Had I known ahead of time, I might have chartered a water taxi to take us out to the T5 EarthCache on the island just off the coast from us, but that would have required more time and even better scheduling than we had (and it wasn’t exactly cheap, either). So we just had to be content with a cache in the back of the park. Far from the crowds ogling the lighthouse and the ocean, we parked near the park’s wall and took a short walk. There was a path and a well-enough trodden geotrail that led to our quarry.

Ladies and gentlemen (or however you identify—I don’t mean to be gender assumptive), I give you The Fort Williams Cache, the oldest cache in Maine!  We put both collective and individual ink on the log. We even took a moment to do the selfie and everything.

I dubbed us the Fort Williams Fellowship, but the name didn’t stick. I can’t have everything. Then we made a little jaunt down the coast to a cove to fulfill one of our goals for the trip. Krissy4884 had never walked in the ocean before, so we all took off our shoes and put our feet in the Atlantic Ocean.

The water was cold. The hard rock and shells made for some delicate walking. The tides had deposited minuscule flotsam everywhere. It was lovely. We also took some time to run back into town to visit the courthouse and grab a few more caches while we were in the area (a Multi-cache, a Virtual, and a Whereigo among them).

We spent a lot of sunlight in Portland. Normally, the part of me that likes to get stuff done would have been chomping at the bit to get more stuff done, but we had such a great time enjoying both caching and non-caching pursuits that even that guy was a little chilled out. We ended the evening watching the sun set a little further down the coast on a beautiful beach, watching the tide roll in and out over sand so fine that the ground looked like glass, reflecting the joggers and the pets and the strollers as they walked along the shore.

Soon, we called it a night. It was our final night in the Northeast, and the thought hung over us like a caul. How were we going to go back to our mundane world after the wonders we had seen? But we all knew we had to. How else would we share those wonders with our spouses, children, and friends eagerly awaiting our return? My thoughts waxed poetic as I drifted off to sleep, disregarding email and photography and the modern wonders and capabilities of the smartphone. There were still a few things to do the next day, so I rested and prepared myself for…