7/5/2011 Belfast

On the drive home, Stephanie asked if we would mind stopping in Belfast for a quick errand. What?? See a town in Maine I haven't been to yet? Twist my arm! Belfast is awesome! There's a bustline downtown with great shops and a gorgeous port. There was even a newspaper article about the booming businesses in Belfast in a local paper recently.

Fun way to cover up a door that's no longer in use:

Lots of galleries with beautiful as well as eclectic art:

One of many unique benches in the downtown area:

Wow. Picture postcard perfect:

Hahahaha Thank you Stephanie for helping us find this awesome photo opp!:

7/4/2011 4th of July in Castine, Maine

KMO was invited to return to Castine to visit the mom of her best friend and most especially, to play flute for the Castine Town Band and fife with the Tarratine Fifes and Drums. She's been to Castine many times before but this time I got to play chauffeur and it was my first time to this historic Maine town. My good friend from UMF, Stephanie, joined us for the fun. I picked up KMO Sunday night at the airport and we spent the night at a hotel in Portland. Left by 6:45 this morning and headed to Augusta where we picked up Stephanie and then headed to Castine. We arrived at 9:45, in plenty of time to get to the Children's Costume Parade at 10:00. The parade was around the Town Commons area. No floats, no bands, no commercial or political statements, just patriotic music blaring from the 1790 Congregational Church steeple and lots of children (and a few accompanying adults) walking through town. What a glorious way to celebrate!

After the parade, there is a giant celebration on the Town Commons including free watermelon, lemonaid, hot dogs, cotton candy, and fried dough. They also had sack races, a tug of war (with a REALLY long rope and a lot of people on both sides), a pie eating contest, and free fire truck rides. How Norman Rockwell can you get?!

This is The Abbott School on the Town Commons.

After the festivities on the Town Commons, we headed down to the wharf, but there were so many kids lined up for the fire truck rides that those were still going on. We got to see one in action.

We stopped at The Breeze, a local fast food place on the wharf. I got their chocolate chip ice cream sandwich made with fresh chocolate chip cookies. It's bigger than it looks. It was as big as it was delicious.

The morning started with a lot of fog ("marine layer" as some call it), but it started to burn off around 11 and though the rest of the day had a haze (and threatened rain off and on), we could still see the beautiful Castine harbor and I managed to get a good sunburn.

On the second floor of Mrs. C's house is a staircase that goes to the ceiling. But at the top of the staircase is a big hatch and you lift that door and you are on the roof of the house with room enough for 7 deck chairs and a big table with this dramatic view.

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.

Wire Bridge in winter

I did it! Last night, I was inspired by the photography at the Orcutt gallery and today, I went to the Wire Bridge to take my own photos. I love the Wire Bridge and have been 3 times with friends/family. This time, I went by myself and just soaked it in and took photos. There wasn't lots of fluffy snow sitting on the wires like the Orcutt photos, but they didn't have gorgeous blue skies and big white puffy clouds in their photos, either. And they had to have Photoshopped out the warning signs that are plastered on the bridge. But that's okay. I will be back. Thank you Maine for preserving this wonderful piece of history and cool architecture.

7/25/08 Celebration Tour #4

We're off! It's time for Celebration Tour #4! We headed north this time instead of the coast. We had an added bonus of an extra passenger, Rodney's niece, whom we'll just call "Little H". She was such a great traveler. :-) She'd been visiting Grandma and Grandpa for a week and they were planning to take her home that day, so we saved them a trip since we were on our way to visit mom and dad at the camp outside of Jackman.

Here's "The Forks" section of the Kennebec River where it meets up with the Dead River. A lot of white water rafters go through here. We saw a lot of gorgeous scenery on the way, but this was our first stop. My favorite sign before we got here was the green mileage sign that said, "Canadian Border 65 miles."

This is the rest stop at The Forks. See the buses in the background? Those are used for carrying white water rafters. Those are empty but in our 5 minutes at this stop, we saw at least 3 full buses go by.

7/20/08 Tourist Shop Next Door to Pemaquid Point Lighthouse

Through the fence at Pemaquid Point Lighthouse, I spotted this very large lobster statue (along with a pirate, an Indian, and a few other tacky tourist statues). I knew I had to have my photo taken with it. Rodney took the photo for me and then we went inside.

Who knew what treasures we would find?! Does this scream tourist shop or what?? It was great! They actually had great stuff and a very quaint restaurant that looked out over the water. I bought some Christmas presents but I'm not telling what or for whom. I also picked up a cute napkin holder for the apartment in the shape of an Adirondack chair. But it's okay because I actually had "cocktail napkin holder" on my shopping list and have been looking for one for a few weeks now. I was thinking traditional basket, who knew exotic and hysterical Adirondack chair-shaped holder was a possibility?

Socks. Who knew Maine could have so may socks for tourists?

AMEN!! If this wasn't $14.95, I might have bought it. It even has blueberries on it. I've been going with a blueberry theme in my kitchen/dining area of the new apartment. Don't tell anyone, I don't want a bunch of blueberry stuff all over the house like I had pandas in the last house. I picked out a few blueberry things to start off the theme and then all new stuff I buy is in some shade of blue. It's more subtle that way.

7/20/08 Smiley Face at Pemaquid

Rodney is trying out a photography technique where you look beyond the sightseer's telescope at the sight itself. I'm photographing him taking that photograph . . .

...when I realize that the back of the telescope looks like a big smiley face! I point that out to Rodney and thus this photo was born:

7/20/08 Trying my hand at photography

Rodney's always playing with this "Dutch Angle" so he inspired me to try my hand at it, too.

Now I've got one to the left and one to the right. What I really need is a true artist's eye to know which is better and why. Knowing the tricks and the vocabulary isn't enough.

7/20/08 More of that Crazy Photographer at Work

7/20/08 Photographer On the Loose at Pemaquid

7/20/08 Still More Pemaquid