We awoke to another day of glorious sunshine so knew that our hiking plans for the day were good. Whilst we were getting ready to go out Jill spotted a grey squirrel sitting on top of the fencing around the vegetable plot eating its way through a whole ear of sweet corn that was nearly as big as it was. As it got towards the end of the cob it laid spread-eagled with its legs stretched out, a pose we'd never seen a squirrel adopt before but then guess we'd never seen one quite so overfull before!

Don and Shelley's cleaning girls Kathy and Karen come on a Thursday so we chatted with them before setting off: they're good American gals! And then it was off to the Dead River Trail which looped around on a gravel path to a trail leading up to the summit of Great Pond Mountain. At 1020ft this was really only a little hill but a great walk all the same and apart from seeing a couple of folk walking dogs on the main track we saw no one and had the mountain completely to ourselves. The day was brilliantly clear and sunny so the views from the summit were great out over the coastline and we could clearly see the Penobscot Narrows Bridge in the distance. We could happily have spent all afternoon on the summit sitting in the warm sunshine admiring the views but we did want to visit the Bridge Observatory that we hadn't had time for yesterday so eventually did make our way down to the car and on to Bucksport.

The Bridge Observatory is pretty unusual: it is an observation deck at the top of one of the bridge towers. There are only a few such viewing platforms anywhere in the world and this one is the highest. It's a clever idea. The viewing platform is reached by a 50second elevator ride to 420ft and then a climb up two flights of stairs that spiral round so you begin to get a sense of the views, which are spectacular. We particularly appreciated the symmetry of our day's views as from here we did of course have a clear view of our morning's summit! And the fact that we were at a height that was approaching half way up our mountain made the tower seem high or the mountain small, depending on your perspective! The bridge itself is elegant and a casts interesting shadows on the river below so we had fun taking photos. We also spotted a seal swimming out of this tidal river estuary, diving as it approached the bridge.

The bridge is next-door to a historic site, Fort Knox, and the Observatory tickets include entry to the Fort so we strolled around the fort for a while before heading back to Castine. We were hoping that there would be some interesting evening sunlight and maybe a good sunset for some more photography. We'd been advised that Backshore Beach was the place to go at sunset so set off there - a bit lazily in the car but that proved to be a good thing as the mosquitoes at the beach were persistent and it meant that Jill could escape them whilst Dave braved it out. On the way we spotted that the light in the Elm trees was quite lovely so stopped to photograph that too, with pleasing results. We hope you like the photos!