Bar Harbor, Maine – September 1, 2013

By sueshafferSeptember 15, 2013

We slept in a bit this morning and then explored the town of Bangor before heading down to Bar Harbor. Bangor is Stephen King’s home town and I wanted to see some of the landmarks in town that are mentioned in his books. Many of his stories are based on the fictional town of Derry, Maine. When he writes about Derry, he is actually writing about Bangor. First we visited the Mount Hope Cemetery. Some of the movie “Pet Semetary” was filmed here. It is the second oldest garden cemetery in the United States. It was established in 1836 and since then over 30,000 individuals have been buried there. The cemetery is huge, covering roughly 300 acres of land. I found it odd that many of the stones only had first names on them. There was a pair that were engraved “Wife” and “Husband”. There were also several we saw that just said “Baby”. One read “Two Elizabeths”, which made us wonder if they were twins sharing one stone. There was one large stone which read “Home for Aged Women” and it was surrounded by individual stones of the women. I don’t know how in the world they managed to mow the grass as there were many steep hills on the property. It was a very beautiful cemetery and we spent about an hour wandering around. We also visited the Thomas Hill Standpipe. This famous landmark was a feature in Stephen King’s “It” and “Dreamcatcher”. The Standpipe is a riveted wrought iron tank with a wood frame jacket. The metal tank is 50 feet high and 75 feet in diameter. The building which encloses the tank is 110 feet high and 85 feet in diameter. The stone foundation is 9 feet high and 3 1/2 feet thick at the base. It holds 1,750,000 US gallons of water and stands atop Thomas Hill in Bangor. It was built in 1897 and is still being used today to regulate Bangor’s water pressure in the downtown area. We also visited the Paul Bunyon statue that is mentioned in “Insomnia” and “It”. Lastly, we stopped at Stephen King’s home and took a few pictures. He has kind of a creepy house painted a blood red color. A wrought iron fence surrounds the property and the gates are adorned with bat wings, spiders, and a 3-headed dragon. We left Bangor and drove south about an hour to Bar Harbor where we will spend the rest of our time this trip. We enjoyed lobster mac n’ cheese and some more blueberry beer at our lunch stop at a small mom and pop type restaurant. In Bar Harbor we picked up our rental mountain bikes and then went to the house that we’d rented for the week. It’s a beautiful cabin style home in a wooded rural area. It has a wrap around porch complete with hammock. It even has an exercise room in the basement (probably won’t be used by us, but nice to have I guess). Deb and I got settled in and then went to get a few groceries. On the way back we picked up Lorraine at the Bar Harbor Airport. The terminal building was tiny……..it is the smallest airport I’ve ever seen. There were no “gates”, just a very small building about the size of a residential home. The plane she flew in on was also tiny…….only 6 passengers on board. We stopped by the house to drop off the groceries and then went to Bar Harbor to eat dinner. We ate at the Thirsty Whale Tavern and all enjoyed seafood and locally brewed beer.