The cue sheet for today's ride can be found at Portland Lighthouses cue sheet, or click on ride description for a starting point.
Today's ride started at the Portland Transportation Center, also known as the train station. The first couple of miles went through a commercial area, then across the Casco Bay Bridge. I actually considered driving across the bridge, but I didn't know what type of parking I'd find on the other side, so I stuck with the documented start point. Big bridges aren't one of my favorite places to ride because they usually don't have any shoulders, and often have open metal grating. Riding across metal grating scares me - it feels slippery (even though it probably isn't) and I hate to even think about falling on it. The Casco Bay Bridge was a pleasant surprise. It had a wide paved shoulder, and it even had concrete over the metal grating on the shoulder. It was beautiful for riding.
The ride started with a loop through South Portland, then a jaunt out to Prouts Neck. At the end of Prouts Neck is a private community where Winslow Homer once lived. I knew that there wasn't a chance of wandering through the houses out there, but I hoped that riding on a relatively narrow strip of land would allow some ocean views. It did. I stopped at Scarborough Beach which was a sandy beach on a narrow inlet, then continued out to the end of Prouts Neck. Beautiful views, and definitely worth the out and back ride on the neck.
Next - on to Cape Elizabeth and the lighthouses. But first I had to ride through a paving-in-process area of route 77. Only one lane was open for traffic. Unfortunately, once I swung back to the other side of the road I was riding on very soft new blacktop. It wasn't terrible, but I did end up with a bit of road gook on my tires. Once I got back to old pavement, I stopped to brush the stuff off of my tires. It wasn't too bad, but I was glad to be back on more solid pavement! And this section of road did finally satisfy my curiosity over roads that looked like they were newly paved but turned out to have terrible surfaces. I could never figure out why the folks in charge of paving would let heavy vehicles with deeply grooved tires mess up the new pavement. Guess they just let everyone drive on the new pavement before it has a chance to cool down. Yikes!
I stopped at Two Lights State Park top check out the view from the headlands. I didn't have a lock with me, so I took the bike with me. I even carried it up and down a couple of flights of stairs. Now that probably looked a bit weird. I sat out on some rocks for a while, just taking in the ocean. There was a couple sitting there too, looking at birds and boats through their binoculars. They asked me if I knew anything about the area. What they were really trying to figure out is if they were sitting on petrified wood. While I could see where they might mistake it for old wood, I'm pretty sure what we were seeing is just normal erosion and flaking of rocks. It looked to me like water creeps into the cracks in the rocks, freezes, and then "exfoliates" the rock. It was really pretty...
The next stop was Cape Elizabeth light. I only saw one lighthouse here, and there are supposed to be two - the current light, and an old one that is now privately owned. I'm not even sure which light I saw!
There were some more out to the ocean and back inland loops, then on to Fort Williams Park and the Portland Head light. According to the cue sheet, this is one of the most photographed lighthouses in the world. It was commissioned by George Washington in 1797.
Onward to the Spring Point Light, then I headed back across the Casco Bay Bridge to Portland. Back at the transportation center, I loaded the bike into my car and headed into the building to pay for parking. It cost $2 to park for the entire day, which I thought was a great deal. Time to head home... it was a quick and easy drive, just under 2 hours.
