8/31/08 Sunday Breakfast Photos

Tracy and Randy make quite the cooking team. Just 'cuz Rodney's in the kitchen in this photo doesn't mean he was cooking this time. I think he was just getting coffee. Check out the Maine blueberries in our pancakes!! Heidi picked 30 GALLONS of blueberries at the height of the season. We went picking after breakfast but these are Heidi's gift to our yummy breakfast. Hey, who's snatching a piece of bacon?!

Mmmmmmmmm. Here's Heidi serving her yummy pigs in a blanket with brown sugar glaze. This photo is pretty accurate . . . Heidi is always on the move, even when she's sitting down.

8/31/08 The rest of a great Sunday

Aaargh. Not enough time to write about this right now but let me just put the outline here so I don't forget the highlights and I promise I'll come back and fill in details.

blueberry picking
late lunch
boat rides
power turns
Polish ping pong (I outlasted Rodney . . . once . . . by accident)
steamers
putting up the boat
kayaking
the amazing "Kodak moment"
dinner
--Mexican night: taco soup, taco salad, chicken enchiladas
group picture
bye to Shanda, Jed, Bekah, and 3 out of 5 kids
another fire--almost didn't happen, then ended up with 12 folks
--both Ray and Ron making surprise entrances (not to compare to Ron's surprise the night before)

9/1/08 Sunrise at MRO . . . a slideshow

8/31/08 Sunday Morning at MRO

I woke up at 5:15 this morning. I just laid in bed very quietly since I didn't want to wake my roommate. But soon, she got up to use the facilities, so I got up, too. I stayed very quiet in the room and worked on my iPhone and my laptop with the free wi-fi from the office in the basement of our cabin. By 6:15, I figured somebody had to take first shower so I quietly gathered my stuff and took a shower. By 7, I was dressed and ready. (It always takes longer to do that when you're trying to be quiet. Every zipper and velcro opening sounds like a cymbal crash.) I went out to the dining hall deck again to reflect and write. Even though the sun is out today, it's much colder and there was a giant bank of puffy white clouds moving very quickly from north to south. Yep, there's a norther moving in.

I headed back to the cabin around 7:40, knowing that we had to be on the other side of the camp by 8am for breakfast. There were folks stirring around but I did have to wake up Christine so she wouldn't miss the taxi to breakfast. When the 5 of us arrived at the North Lodge, breakfast was well under way. Bacon was cooked and Heidi was passing out miniature pigs in a blanket (smokie sausages wrapped in half a crescent roll) that were oozing a butter and brown sugar glaze. I'd never had anything like that before, but I will certainly have it again if given the opportunity! Yum! What we were all waiting for was the pancakes that were being cooked on the griddle. . . with fresh, wild, Maine blueberries in them. Oh my! And it turns out, we had syrup that is tapped and made right on MRO property!! What a breakfast!!

After breakfast, there was a Sunday morning prayer service in the living room! How awesome is that?!! Ray and Ron are both ordained pastors and Randy serves in church ministry as well. Actually, Ben is going to Divinity School next week and Jed is a former youth minister. Marcus is a director of a Christian camp (MRO) and gives retreats all the time. Practically everyone in this family has been on one or more mission trips and served as a Sunday school teacher. It wasn't surprising that there was a prayer service. But that doesn't diminish at all how special this prayer service was. Little ones wandered around and sat in different people's laps, Marcus played guitar, we all sang, Ron had the service planned and led it but many folks chimed in and contributed. When it was time for the service to end, Ray spoke up and asked everyone to pray for Rodney's new chapter of his life, so we all stood and gathered in a tight circle. Rodney told everyone about his journey and where it's headed and Ray led us all in a prayer for his safety, his happiness, and his strength in answering the call that is taking him to Oregon. It was very special for Rodney and for all of us.

8/30/08 Saturday Breakfast Photos

Our cooks for the morning . . . Randy (in charge), Rodney, and Heidi.

The rest of us are watching and waiting.

8/30/08 Incredible Saturday at MRO for Labor Day weekend

Wow. What a day. It started with a big breakfast for 12 (Grammy and Christine arrived after dinner last night) at 8:00. There wasn't enough room in the North Lodge for everyone, so 3 of us spent the night on the other side of the lake in a very nice "cabin" (more like a house). I woke early so I snuck out and found a quiet porch to sit on looking out over the lake and wrote. I mostly just tried to soak in all that beauty and reflect on God's amazing generosity. . . more of those "magnificent whispers".

After breakfast a bunch of us drove about 15 minutes to a dirt road and then hiked another 20 minutes into a wonderful waterfall area called Slide Down Falls. It was great! The water was sooooooo cold but once your feet got numb (which was pretty instant), you didn't mind. Some folks climbed to the top of the first falls and jumped into and off of the falls into various pools of water. Then we all went up to the next level of falls where there was a precipice that you could jump off of into a very deep pool of water 11 feet below. I just watched and took a lot of photos. My blood as a former lifeguard only curdled a few times.

When we got back it was a lunch of grilled ham and cheese sandwiches with tomato soup. YUM! Did that ever hit the spot. Today was cloudy and gray without the rain which didn't hamper the trip to the falls at all but was perfect weather for a lunch of hot sandwiches and soup. After lunch we sat around and yacked and played with babies and snacked on delicious homemade goodies: caramel chex mix, peanut butter crunchies, and chocolate chip cookies. Hmmmm, other people were asked (or volunteered) to bring items they cooked themselves. Rodney and I were only asked to bring items to contribute to the collective. How did they know?!

I had an interesting conversation with Jed this afternoon. He's Ron's son--one of the nephews. He's a police officer in Wilton, next to Farmington. A bunch of us were standing around and Heidi (our hostess) handed Jed a blueberry rake. It took a second, but I recognized it from having stopped to watch a group on the side of the road gathering wild blueberries when I was in Maine a few years ago with Gerald, Rhonda, and Brian. Jed didn't know what it was and I gave him a hard time about it that someone new to the state would know but a local wouldn't. He explained that he wasn't a local either, being a Wisconsin boy. But he then proceeded to give me a very hard time. The C* family is very good at giving each other a hard time--lots of kidding and razzing. And though Jed married in to the family, I don't think he acquired that sense of humor from being affiliated with the family, I think he was raised that way and just fits in well. Anyway, he started saying, "Even if I was a local, I wouldn't know things like 'this is a blueberry rake.' I'm not all about the Maine culture like you are. 'Oh, what a fascinating use of the language. I wonder why they say cah instead of car? What nationalities are contributing to the melting pot that is Maine?' No, not me. All I care about is what's to eat and what extreme sport can I participate in next." How did he know?? He nailed it! Then I said to him, "No wonder you're such a good police officer. You're very good at reading people." To which he replied, "And you're an open book." ROTFL!

Next on our agenda was Polish Ping Pong. What a hoot! And as long as you have enough paddles, you can play with as many people as you want. It involves everyone only playing one volley at a time. You have to remember what order you're going in and when it's your turn, it doesn't matter how many times the ball hits the table, you have to wait 'til it hits the floor and you only get one bounce and have to get it back on the table and then step aside for the next person. I know my words aren't doing the game justice because when people tried to explain the game to us, it was too hard to conceptualize. Fortunately, a demonstration round takes care of it all and that's what Marcus and Heidi and a few others did. Then we played and oh my, what a fun game. The first three rounds, I was out ASAP. But the next round, I happened to get behind Rodney and he kept setting up gentle and easy shots for me. Shanda described it as, "Take pity on Texas." I liked thinking that he was being a great coach and teacher. Either way, I did get a chance to get a feel for the game. I ended up after him several more times and though it's a fun game to watch (which when you're the first person out, you get to do a lot of), it's even more fun to play. I gotta say, though, as competitive as this family is, they were very supportive of the rookie and cheered my lucky shots.

Soon it was time for dinner. We do seem to do a lot of eating, but I guess that's typical for these kinds of events. And it is a great time to yack and chat and tell stories. Tonight we had to bring out the second table onto the porch. Marcus said our count was 19. It would've been 20 but Marcus and Bekah's Grammy, who came up last night, had already left so she could be home tonight in order to teach Sunday school in the morning. Tonight's meal was homemade lasagna and barbecue kabasa. Who would've ever though that kabasa smothered in barbecue sauce and grilled would be delicious? Everyone said Bekah's lasagna was just like her mother's. Since her mom wasn't even coming down until the next day and I'd never had her mom's lasagna, I wouldn't know. But I do know it was scrumptious.

After dinner it was time for fireworks. When you're sitting on 7,000 acres of private land in the middle of nowhere, you don't have to worry about local laws regulating fireworks. I joined the gang for the first one which was an M-80 (whatever that means). We were hunkered down behind cars since the M-80 was inside a Mountain Dew can in order to see if the can could be, literally, blown to smithereens. When it went off, I realized that I don't think I'd ever heard anything that loud ever before in my life. I also had a chance to look around at all the folks who were picking up "smithereens" (shrapnel) and realized, it was all men besides me so I snuck out and joined the women and children inside. None of the rest of the fireworks were anything to look at, they were just loud to listen to and I could do that from inside.

Pretty soon, we got the word that the "pretty fireworks" were about to take place, so I did go back outside for that. In the clearing by the boat dock, Ben set up a series of sparkly, wooshy, colored fireworks that were way cool. What an appropriate culminating celebration of an amazing day. After that it was hanging out by the fire in the great Adirondack chairs (there were too many of us for the five chairs, so there were a lot of folding "camp chairs" to choose from as well, but somehow, I managed to get an Adirondack chair again. Way cool. More stars and more stories. There was a little bit of cloud cover so you couldn't see as many stars and pretty soon, the cloud cover grew to the point where there were more clouds than stars and soon, there were no stars at all. About the time that we decided to call it a night, the rain started to fall, so our timing was perfect.

Tonight, Christine and Dale joined us on our side of the lake. They both had been here the night before but pawns that we all were, they moved over. Later that night after lights out, Christine and I chatted well into the night both lying in our sleeping bags on top of our beds in the dark. A touch of slumber party was a fun way to top off the night that followed a glorious day.

8/29/08 Photos for Friday at MRO

Recognize this? It's the Rest Stop that overlooks Attean Lake. It's the last place for a cell phone signal and the indicator that you're REALLY CLOSE to arriving at Moose River Outpost. :-)

Randy is our chef and chief food organizer for the weekend. Here he is prepping his famous marinated pork cutlet strips. Yum!

Great Uncle Rodney with his youngest niece.

8/29/08 Labor Day weekend at MRO

[Note: photos related to this entry will appear in a separate entry. I'm writing this text without an Internet connection and will upload all as soon as I can.]

Labor Day is the time for the annual C* Family and Friends Celebration. I'm not sure that's it's official title . . . I've heard big blowout, family reunion, extravaganza. But whatever you call it,for several Labor Days in a row, the C* family plus their extended family and friends have gathered at Moose River Outpost for a long weekend of fun and fellowship in a beautiful setting. There were 10 adults and 4 kids at dinner last night, but it sounds like we may get up to as many as 20 at the peak. At one point there were as many as 30 coming, but plans change, so it will be a surprise who makes it and who doesn't. Folks come and go as they can. Jed and Becky with their two little ones were here last night but are leaving Sunday afternoon; some folks aren't even coming until Sunday night, and a few might just come out for the day Monday. Marcus, our host, told us that we were all pawns and he was going to move us around a lot in order to accommodate everyone, so where you sleep tonight may not be where you sleep tomorrow night based on who's in attendance and what their needs are. That's the beauty of bringing a sleeping bag . . . that kind of moving around is a breeze.

Rodney and I left Farmington at the height of rush hour Friday afternoon . . . no really . . . traffic was horrendous. And Farmington is not equipped to handle traffic. We actually left at 2, so we're not sure what all the traffic was. There were a lot of school buses but who were all the other people? UMF is having first- year student orientation but that doesn't officially start until tomorrow so it wasn't too many parents driving their college students to school. Oh well. We finally got out of town by taking a back road to I don't know where. I was driving but was NOT navigating.

The drive was spectacular. It was rainy/cloudy the only other time I've ever been to MRO. Today was blue skies and white puffy clouds. The rivers we drove next to were clear and reflecting the sky's beautiful blue color. Some turns in the river were glassy smooth, other times we saw ripples and other tomes rapids. Time flew as we listened to "mystery music"--old CD mixes that Rodney had burned that weren't labeled so we just popped them in and waited to see what would come up next . . . like a shuffle setting on your iPod the old- fashioned way. Some was new music to me, others were golden oldies that we sang along to. My sister would've been mortified . . . TWO people singing outloud in the car--her worst nightmare. Too bad--she wasn't there and I was having a blast. One of the new songs I heard had a beautiful phrase in it about God's "magnificent whispers". It was the perfect description of the drive.

At camp, our center of operations is a lodge on the north side of the lake, called North Lodge, appropriately enough. It has 5 bedrooms, a kitchen, a big living/gathering area, a porch with a picnic table, a dining room, and a kitchen. Randy is in charge of food. Oh yea! That means it will be delicious. Everyone was assigned food items to bring and all those individual components will magically combine into great meals. Tonight was pork cutlets marinated in a secret recipe (I believe there was soy sauce and oregano involved . . . don't knock it 'til you've tried it) and grilled on the giant grill. Randy apologized because we had just served it to Rodney and me when we had dinner at his house earlier in the week. I was thinking instead, "Yeehah, we get to have it again!" There was cole slaw and baked beans, pasta salad, fresh corn on the cob (that was on our list--we stopped at a roadside stand on the way up and bought it), rolls, and lots of laughter and conversation.

Earlier in the evening, folks had been disappearing to Marcus's new hideaway that he had created. My first journey out there was after dinner in the dark. Just a few yards off the back porch, past a few pine trees, was a clearing that looked out over the lake, had a fire circle (with fire already blazing when I got there), and a collection of Adirondack chairs. It truly was picture perfect. Four of the five C* brothers were sitting around swapping stories and telling tales on each other while nephews, cousins, and family friends just soaked it all in. We laughed so hard. Meanwhile, in a little circle of sky above us and a sliver of horizon in front of us, framed by majestic pine trees, the stars were out. There was no moon and the stars were like a blanket of confetti. There were SO many stars out. You could see the Milky Way and we saw several satellites and some shooting stars. I've sat around a lot of campfires in my life and I would definitely rate this as a really great one.

As the evening wore on, little ones and their moms and then a few others excused themselves. Soon we were down to four brothers, Marcus, Dale (another family friend), and me. Marcus went and stood on the edge of the lake and did a loon call. It sounded just like a loon. But what happened next was amazing. There was an echo across the lake of that loon call. And then another echo and then another. There were at least four echoes and the third one was the louder than the second. It sounded more like someone was across the lake answering back. He did it several more times, each time the echoes lasted 6, 7, 8 seconds. It was unbelievable. Then we moved to another spot on the shore line where the echoes are apparently even better. Marcus experimented with pointing his loon call in different directions and while the echoes continued to be eery and beautiful, I was distracted by something I had never seen in my life. The lake was reflecting starlight. The water was so still and the sky so clear, you could see the reflection of stars in the water. What an incredible ending to a great day. What a wondrous magnificent whisper from God.

8/27/08 45 degrees and other numbers

45 degrees. We're not talking angles here, that was the temperature when I got up this morning! Yes, I got up a little earlier than usual, but it doesn't matter. It's AUGUST and the temperature was 45 degrees . . . Fahrenheit! In Dallas, yesterday's high was 96 and the low was 76. For us, the high was 74 and the low was 46. And today's low is going to be 45. Yup. It's Maine!

BTW, this is my 501st blog entry in "Life with the Mainiacs". That's a pretty cool milestone! And the travel blog is at 234 (fun number). That's a lot of blog entries in only 18 months of blogging. Here's to another 500!

8/18/08 Autumn is coming

I'm on my way to meet my Godfamily from Long Island! We're meeting at Sebago Lake State Park in Maine. Just outside of Turner, I stopped to buy some blueberries to take to the family. They usually have pancakes one of the mornings we camp and I thought it would be fun to put some fresh Maine blueberries in those pancakes.

Check out this tree at the roadside stand where I bought the blueberries. Does that look like autumn to you? This is not a dying tree and it's not an anomaly. I saw probably 20 patches of color on the drive to Sebago Lake. Summer really is over.

So the big question is: If I'm camping with the Godfamily but we're camping in Maine, which blog should I use? Is it a Maine Adventure or a Travel Adventure??? Since we'll be camping in Maine for 2 days but then heading out to Massachusetts and on down to New York, I'll keep the whole trip together in one blog and put it all in my Travel Blog. Look for entries that start 8/18/08 to keep up with me. I come back to Maine before Labor Day and have more adventures planned, plus I plan to have many more unplanned adventures. See you on the other side!

8/18/08 They're harvesting again

This is NOT a duplicate of the photos you've seen before of the harvesting of "my field" that I watch from my verandah. We've had enough rain, sunshine, and time that whatever is growing there grew back enough that they could cut it and bale it yet again.

8/17/08 Voter Hill

I went to a whole new area today. I was mentioning to friends that I had missed the Perseid meteor shower because of so much cloud cover but had really enjoyed the full moon on the night that we didn't have cloud cover. They asked if I had gone to Voter Hill to look at the full moon. And what is Voter Hill? It's a "hill" (steep and big) south and west of town. Go towards Titcomb Mountain (which is shorter than Voter Hill) but take a right instead of a left. It's great for stargazing and for a nice overlook of Farmington.

So I headed to Voter Hill today. The directions were pretty good. I only had to make one U-turn (Lindsay). There are actually two left-hand turns to get to Titcomb Mountain, so I went to the right at the first turn and realized I was going to Temple. I knew there was nothing like they had described on that road. So I went back and took the first turn to Titcomb Mountain and then saw a road to the left called "Voter Hill". It was very near the second turn-off to Titcomb Mountain, so I felt pretty certain I was headed in the right direction. Sure enough, I had to shift into low gear (I NEVER shift into lower gear on my automatic care. I long for my stickshift car when I had control over these things.) I headed up what must've been the part that one friend described as "the winter reason for why she would never live on Voter Hill."

There was no official scenic overlook or any designated places to park for either looking at Farmington or doing stargazing, but if I knew anyone who lived there, I would certainly love to sit in their driveway. Meanwhile, here's the view:

8/15/08 a close encounter

Note to my mom: this is not a personal close encounter . . . I'm just reporting on someone else's close encounter.

See this picture of a moose? Rodney just took this and posted it on Facebook. He was at Moose River Outpost, a camp near the Canadian border that his nephew directs. Knowing that Rodney's a photographer, I figured he had his zoom lens on and took the photo from afar.

But I was wrong. Check out Rodney's description of what happened.

"A more than curious moose made its way across the lawn today at Moose River Outpost. I was about 5 feet from the nose of this moose. It kept following me. I was getting a bit uncomfortable but in the mean time getting some sick photos of it."

Below is a photo that someone else took of Rodney while he was photographing the moose.

Now THAT is a close encounter!

Photo of moose by Rodney Corey; used with permission.
Photo of Rodney and moose by Oscar Bodell; used with permission.

8/13/08 The Dairy Corner

After dinner on the beach, we went on some backroads and came out at the intersection of Route 1 with Route 9 and came to The Dairy Corner. I am getting a headstart on that ice cream quest for next summer. ;-) Grace had black raspberry ice cream. It was a hard-serve ice cream and not a soft-serve ice cream like at Dutch Treat.

But I got a Nor'Easter . . . the Cyclone / Blizzard equivalent.

8/13/08 ...on the boardwalk...

So I'm at Maine's premier beach resort and giant tourist attraction but I'm inside al day and night working. It is pretty fun, though, to sit on Grace's "deck" (enclosed patio?) with glass on two sides, looking out over the Atlantic and gorgeous sandy beach. The hardest part has been that it hasn't been raining. Two straight days of no rain and I'm stuck indoors. Have we even had two straight days of no rain since I got back in the middle of June? The good news is: we've gotten a lot of good work done. We've been working on two different research papers and some data analysis. We finished up our work on the "Tools Retreat" (all day technology workshop) that we're putting on for our department colleagues at the end of the month (this will be our 4th Tools Retreat in a year . . . we have such a great department). We met for 2 days in June and 2 days in July and now 2 and a half days in August. It's so nice to not have to try to do this part of my job by myself. I so prefer to do research as part of a team.

But it's hard to do 12 straight hours of work, so we do take an occasional break. Tonight we went down to the tourist part of Old Orchard Beach and walked around the boardwalk, up and down the pier, and into some of the shops. Here's where we picked up our dinner:

Check out the location of that Chinese restaurant. It's on the midway! See the carnies and the rides? What a hoot!

We went into a candy shop where they make their own taffy. The sign actually says, "Please try a sample of our handmade taffy." I tried the flavor called cake batter. I passed over blueberry and root beer which both sounded interesting.

When you're on the east coast, the sunrises are over the water and the sunsets are not. Here's a sunset shot as the train guards are coming down. The Down Easter train is coming through.

Well, we only thought the Down Easter was coming through. The gates went back up, we crossed the track, then the gates went back down and the Down Easter (an Amtrack passenger train that goes from Portland, Maine to Boston, Massachusetts) came through. Check out the ferris wheel and the moon rise in the background.