Trip to Maine - Part 2

After I spent 2 nights seeing my brother, father, aunt and cousins in Rockport, Massachusetts, and getting a lot of good work and planning done, I drove back to Maine to finish my vacation there. It was a pain to interrupt my vacation, but ultimately it was worth it. Rockport is a beautiful spot too, and we need to do everything we can to keep the house in the family. Some photos from that trip - the first is a sunset over the Folly Cove Lobster Pound where we had dinner, and the second is the view from my aunt's house on the water:



The other cool thing is that my rental car was a Mustang! It was fun driving that back and forth - about a total of 12 hours of driving in 3 days.

Anyway, let me show you a bunch of other pictures from the photo journal of our Maine vacation.

These photos are from a hike up Day Mountain that I did with Will & Ally (Annika wasn't feeling well, so Tom took her home). It was a pretty easy hike, with wonderful views as a payoff. Also there were lots of ripe blueberries along the way! You are looking at the Cranberry Islands in the pictures.




On July 14th I turned the ripe old age of 44. Usually I have my birthday before I get up to Maine, so it was a treat to be celebrating while we were there. My in-laws treated us to dinner (which unfortunately was at a restaurant that had gone severely downhill since the previous year), and we had a celebration. Some photos of the festivities, including some of my mother and father-in-law:





And since I have included photos of sunsets in Arizona and Rockport, here is an example from Southwest Harbor from my birthday evening:


We went on another, longer hike with everyone in the family on Parkman Mountain and Bald Peak. We had done this hike one time before, but while we were hiking a bank of fog blew in, followed by a rainstorm (this hike is actually famous in our family lore!). We hiked down in the rain, and we could not see the view from the top since we were surrounded by fog. So we definitely wanted to try this hike again!

The view of Somes Sound from the top of Parkman Mountain:


Our little picnic in the coll between the two peaks:


Yours truly at the top of Bald Peak. It was a hot day, so the breeze was really appreciated:


Finally, the absolutely extraordinary view from the top of Bald Peak. You can see Upper Hadlock Pond in the foreground, then Lower Hadlock Pond, and then the Cranberry Islands extending out past Northeast Harbor. We kept commenting on how the top of this mountain looked like Middle Earth (or at least like Peter Jackson's version of it).



Unfortunately, as we were hiking down some pretty treacherous sections, I slipped on some loose gravel and cut myself up and gave myself a nice bruise. I ended up missing some running during the next week since I was pretty bruised up. I can't believe that a few years ago we did that hike in the rain with a toddler!

We did one more sail the following day, but we ended up cutting it a bit short because of a huge fog bank that rolled in while we were on the water. Look at it - it looked like a mountain of fog.


This next set of photos is from a boat trip we took out from Bass Harbor. We have done fishing trips and whale watches - both of which we enjoyed - but I think this little nature cruise was the best boat trip we have taken on Mt. Desert. It is called Island Cruises, and the man that runs the boat is a lifelong resident of the area, and really knows his stuff.

We went on the boat with one of Tom's oldest friends who brought her kids and her niece and nephew. Here we all are looking at something:


The lovely Bass Harbor Lighthouse:


And SEALS - I have never seen so many seals in my life! In these pictures there are both harbor seals and gray seals (which are larger):




We also saw a loon, a beached humpback whale (I'll spare you my picture of that), and spent some time looking at a salmon farm. It was a very pleasant two hours!

At this point it was almost time for us to head home to Philadelphia. While we had come up to Maine in one day, we were taking two days to drive home. We spent the night at the very nice Comfort Suites in Sturbridge, Mass., and caught the final episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender there (which was very important to everyone - we're all big fans!). We then drove down to Hartford where we visited with Tom's sister, her husband and their son for a couple of hours. Usually we see them in Maine, but they did not make it up this year.

We left Hartford at 3pm, and made it home by 8:00 (after an unfortunate wrong turn onto the NY State Thruway!).

It was another terrific vacation in Maine. Next year we really hope to stay for 3-4 weeks, and get really relaxed!