Traffic Stopper

This is the scene in the parking lot of The Maine Mall. They plow the parking lot, but that snow has to go somewhere. So they picked this portion of the parking lot to dedicate to snow storage until it melts. Every parking lot in Maine has fewer parking spaces in winter than it does the rest of the year.

Resident Sand

I saw this area and the sign in the parking lot at Deering Oak Park. This raises so many more questions for me than it answers. I can guess, but I really don't know.

WinteRush

When I went to pick up the candidate at The Comfort Inn, I arrived earlier than we had planned, so I hung out in the lobby. I watched the news while I waited--that's a rare treat for me since I don't have any television reception in my apartment and I refuse to have cable. The ending story was on WinteRush in Portland. They were interviewing a team that was doing a snow carving and told of all the fun family activities that would be in Deering Oaks Park that day. It looked like fun but I didn't think much more about it until I happened to drive by Deering Oaks Park. So I pulled over and found a parking spot and checked out the snow carvings. Pretty fun!

After I voted for my favorite (I'll never tell which one), I headed back to my car and ran into Marisella, a friend from UMF! It was so great to see her. She was there with her family. Her little one had done the sledding on the hill and also the "book trail". There's a children's book about snowshoeing and they had made an enlargement of each page (poster-sized) and put them all around the park. The kids borrowed the snow shoes provided and followed the trail, stopping to read the book at each station along the trail. There were also snowball fights and hula hoop contests and many other fun events planned.

Portland Head Light in Winter

When we were at LL Bean, Dake bought postcards of Maine to take home as souvenirs. The very nice clerk asked her if she had actually seen any of the places on the postcards and Dake explained that she really hadn't had any time to do that but that she wanted to come back. The clerk said, "Well, you should at least see the Portland Head Light. It's not very far from here." Twice, I've been to Portland Head Light (one of many lighthouses in Maine), and both times, someone else was driving and it involved a lot of curvy roads through neighborhoods. So you can imagine that I was a little leary. The clerk assured me it wasn't difficult, so I let her give us directions which involved "The Million Dollar Bridge." After we left, Dake and I decided it was best to stick with our original plan and get her to the airport since I was unsure of this detour. But after I dropped Dake off at the airport, I decided to try the adventure. The directions worked! I think I could take you to the Portland Head Light if you came to visit me! (You better hurry though, 'cuz I'll forget pretty quickly.)

It was my first time there in winter. The gift shop wasn't open and the main parking lot wasn't plowed, but there were plenty of people walking around, braving the cold and soaking in the sight.

Driving a Fuel Efficient Vehicle

I volunteered to take the special education candidate back to the airport in Portland on Saturday morning. We agreed to leave an hour earlier than we needed in order to stop off at L. L. Bean in Freeport. I reserved a university car for the trip--it saves the university money and it saves wear and tear on my car. Turns out that at UMF, our university cars are Toyota Priuses. When we arrived at L. L. Bean, there was a great parking spot available right next to Employee of the Month...and we were eligible.