6 Aug - Telephone Museum (What??!) and Resupply

6 Aug
Only a true "comm guy" would travel all the way from Iowa to Maine to got to a telephone museum!!  Well, Doreen has her lighthouses and I have my comm gear!!  So today we headed up the road to visit the "New England Museum of Telephony".  It is located back in the woods, but they have a fantastic display of WORKING telephone equipment dating back to the beginning of telephony.  Having worked on telephone equipment for many years I found this place to be very interesting.  They have a wide variety of not only phones, but telephone switching equipment, some of which I have worked on before!  My wife kids me about that and says I should be in a museum.  Ha Ha hardy har har.

So we finally found the place and were greeted by very friendly folks.

The building does not look like much, but just step inside..!

The guy that did our tour is their association treasurer and a school teacher.  he has never worked for a telephone company but he is extremely knowledgeable and phone stuff. His passion is telephony and that is obvious.  He built a switching system out of parts, installed it in a building, and transported the building to one of the local islands so they could have phone service.  He was very passionate about his tour and I was very interested in what he had to say, but neither Doreen or I were looking for an associated degree in telephony...  Man this guy went into detail and we were there for about 1-1/2 hours.  I really appreciate anyone who has that much passion about their hobby and it was all good!!

So he took us around the building and we did a hands-on with various telephone displays.

Old corded switchboard, fully operational

Another corded switchboard, also operational

Our tour guide, the school teacher

In their new display building

The displays go on and on

Wide variety of vintage phones

More phones

That orange butt set should look familiar to our 132d Comm Flight folks.  We had the exact same one in our switch room.

The switching system he built for the island

Inside the building.

Well, I never expected to tour a telephone museum near bar Harbor but I am really glad we found this place.

On the way back to the campground we found a Walmart and restocked on groceries and other supplies.  Then we made our way back to the campground and enjoyed the rest of the day.  Doreen met the neighbor to our port side.  They are from Missouri and he is in insurance.  On the starboard side the guy is retired from USDA and volunteers for the USO.  ou never know who you are going to meet in the campground.

In the coming week we are going to take the cruises mentioned before, plus meet with an Air Force First Sergeant comrade from Iraq and another Air Force buddy from Loring who we have not seen since 1976.

More to follow!