For anyone interested in things nautical, Maine Maritime Museum in Bath is a treasure. We visited in early October, primarily to continue pursuing the Folk Art Trail sponsored by so many Maine museums this fall.

It was a beautiful autumn day, boasting blue skies and gentle cool breezes, and we decided to take the outdoor tour first, led by docent John Beaven, a friend we made while on an Elderhostel trip overseas. John has an engaging personality and shepherded his large group of tourists through the Percy and Small Shipyard with ease. We absorbed a lot of information as we strolled along.

We learned that in the mid-19th century, Bath was the fourth biggest shipbuilding town on the east coast, preceded only by New York, Philadelphia and Boston. Samuel Percy was born in 1856, and went to sea when he was 18 years old. At 25, he became a captain of his own vessel. In 1897, he bought the Percy and Small Shipyard and oversaw the building of 41 large schooners. The shipyard closed in 1920 with the end of an era, as sail finally succumbed to steam and wood to steel.

As we walked along, we were entranced by a gorgeous metal sculpture – its bare white frame outlining the exact shape of the six-masted schooner, Wyoming, built in the Percy and Small Shipyard and launched here on Dec. 15, 1909. The largest wooden sailing vessel ever to be built for commercial purposes on the east coast, it measured more than 329 feet in length and this amazing three-dimensional representation of the ship illustrates clearly how enormous these vessels were. The Wyoming cost $185,000 to build. Five years later, it was sold for $350,000. Unfortunately, in 1924, the ship went down in a blizzard off the Nantucket Shoals near the Pollock Rip Lightship. The crew and the cargo of coal were all lost at sea.

Back inside the museum, we explored the extensive folk art exhibit of more than 80 sailor-made items. The lid of a sea chest was decorated with a lovely picture of a square-rigger nearing land. The mariner who painted the scene, Charles B. Bunker, of Winter Harbor, was engaged to Eleanor Pendleton, also of Winter Harbor. When Bunker died at sea, the chest was returned to his parents, who in turn gave it to Eleanor. If you looked closely, you could see that her nickname, “Nettie,” was lettered on the stern of the ship. The chest has remained with her descendants ever since.

Beautifully made shadow boxes also caught my eye – one displayed the schooner Alice approaching a point of land with two lighthouses (perhaps Two Lights?). Another featured a tugboat with wooden fenders – standard equipment until the mid 1920s, when discarded auto tires came into use. Exquisite examples of scrimshaw filled one case, with etchings of such luminaries as President George Washington, Maj. Gen. Joseph Warren, killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775, and the Indian warrior Osceola, chief of the Seminoles. I particularly loved the sea bag of Jack Gardner, who circled the globe in 1920-21 on the SS West Hargrave, a freighter of World War I vintage. Using India ink on his white canvas bag, Gardner depicted all the wonders he experienced – such as a bullock cart in Ceylon, a pagoda in China, the sphinx and a camel in Egypt, a windmill in Holland. He also included a map of his travels, complete with dates for each port.

A clear day for a Weather Center tour

Early in October, a busload of students from the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Southern Maine set off for New Hampshire to visit the Mount Washington Observatory’s Weather Discovery Center in North Conway. The leaves were just beginning to turn and driving along the Kancamagus Highway was a delight. We made several stops to view the Swift River tumbling over smooth boulders and to take photos of the mountains covered with brilliant foliage.

After entering Franconia Notch State Park, we stopped at the Flume Gorge and Visitor Center for lunch and to see a short movie explaining the geology of the Notch and illustrating the effects of weather and glaciers over the last 400 million years. Included in the film were interesting pictures of The Old Man of the Mountain, both before and after the disastrous rockslide in 2003.

We arrived at the Weather Discovery Center just in time for the live hook-up with the Mount Washington Observatory. A dish on top of the center and another on top of the tower at the observatory allowed us to see and hear the meteorologist on duty and we were able to receive answers to our many questions. We discovered that the center and the observatory are nonprofit organizations supported by members, volunteers and various grants. In addition, the National Weather Service pays $30,000 for a year of weather data, and such firms as L. L. Bean pay to have their cold weather outfits tested by the staff.

The weather room in the observatory operates 24 hours a day and 365 days a year – technicians work for eight days, and then have six days off the mountain. Shifts are 12 hours long and observations are taken every hour regardless of the weather. As a matter of fact, it had already snowed on Mount Washington and cameras allowed us to see a bundled-up technician outside chipping away at the ice and snow that had collected on the instruments.

The center also has a fascinating museum of weather-related displays, Many of us entered the “wind room,” furnished to resemble the first facility on top of Mount Washington, with a bunk bed, a coal stove, an old typewriter and a clothesline from which dangled wool socks and a long scarf. Closing the door to the room activated a wind machine and we experienced what it must have been like to endure winds that accelerated well over 200 mph. Boards creaked, the winds howled and the room shook – it was realistic and scary and a fitting end to a memorable trip.