Visiting Highlights in Pownal's Area

Maine

May 2025

A Local Hike to Bradbury Mountain Summit

After yesterday’s long drive, we stayed in the area to and explored a local highlight, Bradbury Mountain State Park.

We began our first hike just outside the park, following the Bradbury-Pineland Corridor directly into the park. Along the trail, we spotted a marker for a historic Feldspar quarry and decided to take a brief detour to check it out. The only remnants of the past mining activity were a pile of old rock tailings and a deep mine trench filled with water. Before turning back, we picked up a mineral specimen that we thought was feldspar to keep as a souvenir.

Once inside the state park, we combined a few well-marked trails to begin our ascent up the mountain. The paths were clear, though we had to navigate around several muddy sections along the way. At the summit, we took a break for lunch and sat on the open rocks. It was a clear, sunny day with excellent visibility, allowing us to enjoy a spectacular panoramic view that reached all the way to Casco Bay, about 10 miles away.

A Giant Surprise in Yarmouth, Maine

On our last day before saying goodbye to the area, we had two to-do visits on our list. The first one was the Garmin facility just a few miles away in Yarmouth. My husband and I both wear Garmin smartwatches, and we had no idea that Garmin’s navigation origins were beyond developing navigation material for hikers until we visited their facility. This beautiful glass-fronted campus was originally the headquarters of DeLorme, the cartography company known for the backcountry paper atlases, the ones we needed to navigate to an unknown destination before smartphones with those apps existed. Garmin acquired DeLorme for its mapping and inReach satellite technology.

The absolute highlight was Eartha, the official Guinness World Record holder for the World’s Largest Rotating and Revolving Globe. With its 1:1,000,000 scale, it shows a combination of satellite imagery and ocean topography of the Earth across 792 panels. It spins slowly on its perfect 23.5-degree axial tilt, powered by a mechanical arm at its base. Standing sheltered in that atrium, it felt like a beautiful tribute to the vulnerable blue planet we love and love to explore.

The Big Indian Lure ... or The Opposite?

Just a short drive from the Garmin facility on our way to Winslow Memorial Park, we were surprised to see a giant Native American statue. We pulled over in Freeport to read about the 40-foot-tall fiberglass statue, known historically as the “Big Freeport Indian” or Chief Passamaquoddy. Erected in 1969, it was commissioned by a local trading post owner as an eye-catching roadside advertisement to attract highway travelers off Route 1 to buy moccasins and souvenirs.

Goodbye to the Gulf of Maine at Winslow Memorial Park

We also added a quick hike in Winslow Memorial Park in Freeport. This coastal park was a gift to the town from the Winslow family in 1953 to protect it from development. It is located on a narrow peninsula, enclosed by the Harraseeket River and the vast, island-studded Casco Bay.

As we walked the trails lined with tall oaks and evergreens along the shoreline, we saw a few of the mythical “Calendar Islands.” They were named this way because early explorers claimed there was one island for every day of the year.

This hike offered a beautiful, bittersweet closing to our time in Maine. As we looked out over the bay, it was a perfect goodbye to the rugged coastline and wild ocean we had come to value so much over the last three weeks in the state.