Final Day in Maine, 2009

We're down in Florida now. After a very cool summer and a very chilly September in Maine it's a bit of a shock to be so warm here, Ft. Myers Beach. We've had the AC (thank goodness for AC) on since arrival, but we now have some relief since a cool front has arrived and we can at last open the windows and enjoy cool relief without air conditioning. When we used to live here in S.FL I remember waiting for the first cool spell of the Fall and how heavenly it felt after a long hot summer.
There are lovely parks near where we are staying for kayaking, biking, walking etc. Before Bill left for a work trip to Alabama last Sunday, 11-1, we kayaked near by with some friends and this week I have ridden my new bike with these same friends out on the Sanibel Island's refuge. Below are a few pictures from that ride just to get in the FL mood.
White Pelicans

Snowy Egret

Common Buckeye Butterfly

Two Bald Eagles!!

Ibis with other shorebirds

Since it's taken me so long to catch up with this blog I'm going to try to breeze through late August and September in Maine as well as the trip down to FL.
My parents are doing well and in this picture in August they have just reached the top of a mountain on the Island. Dad is 86 and Mom 83. Not bad eh?

On that same hike a view of Long Pond.

My nephew, Nayan, and niece, Mia, were such fun and we miss them. This day was Mia's 6th birthday. Hi Nayan and Mia!

Hurricane Bill brought a stirred up ocean and great waves to the Island.

When Helene visited us for a long week end in early September we packed in as much as we could, first sailing on a Friendship Sloop from where I took this picture of a part of Southwest Harbor. You can even see West Marine where I worked this summer and last summer as well.

There wasn't a lot of wind but it was a beautiful sail.

We went out to dinner in Bar Harbor and this was our view, a 4 masted schooner which sails out of Bar Harbor.

Helene, Bill and I also took a ride over to Schoodic Point, another section of Acadia National Park near Winter Harbor, where a Sculpture Symposium was taking place. Bill and I had been to this symposium last year, were really impressed and wanted to see it again. For 6 weeks or so the public can watch 6 artists from around the world sculpt their own design out of a block of granite and when we went this time the artists had about 2 more weeks to go on their pieces.
The first picture below is of a sculpting from last year's symposium installed in Winter Harbor. This picture is at shows the scupture at mid tide or so and at low tide it's completely exposed in the mud flats.

Here are a couple pictures of this year's works in progress.

One beautiful day we, Helene and I, hiked into Jordan Pond House for lunch/tea with popovers and met Bill and the dogs there. This has been an island tradition for a really long time. My great grandparents had tea and popovers here! Tea is served inside or outside on the lawn overlooking Jordan Pond.

Bringing your dogs to tea is very acceptable here.

We made sure to show Helene Cadillac Mountain where the sun shines first as it arrives on the shores of the United States. This is the only mountain on the island where you can drive to the top and it has a fabulous view since it's the highest mountain on Mt. Desert Island.

Bass Harbor Lighthouse

Helene and I walked out to the ocean Ship Harbor and saw this Goldenrod Spider.

Helene

My brother and son.

This yound fox was very interested in Nayan and Mia's chickens and hung around for quite a while one afternoon, long enough for me to get a few nice pictures. The chicken coop became a regular route for he and other fox relatives, just hoping for a human to forget to lock the flock up.

Helene didn't get to see the finished products at the symposium but Bill and I went back to Schoodic Point to see the completed sculptures and were impressed.

We thought we were ready to leave the Island October 5 and stopped in Bangor for an appointment to have some quick work done on the camper only to be told we needed more work done than we had thought. So we left the camper there and returned to my parents house for 4 more days. We made the most of it and it was relaxing since the thing we work the most on wasn't there...the camper. I took a lovely autumn walk with my parents in the Bar Harbor area where the foliage was so pretty.

This is a beaver dam. Pretty cool eh?

Not a bad final view of Maine in autumn splendor.

Well, our work on the camper wasn't able to be completed by the folks in Bangor and they said we should go to the people who put our suspension in originally to have them do the work that needed doing. Arggggg. That meant Indiana......We thought about the pros and cons and decided to just get it done now rather than wait until the spring when who knows what would be going on and so we pushed ourselves and made a fast trip to Indiana only to find out we might not have needed the work the other RV place thought we did. Welcome to world of RVing. It has it's moments. Anyway, We arrived unanounced on Monday and they said they couldn't fit us in until Friday so they put us in their garage, told us we could stay in it in the garage while they fit us in when they could. So here was our view for 3 nights. It was a little dark.

At least the surrounding area was pretty, lots of farms and pretty fall country ....

and it was Amish country. Everyday for those who live there but kind of unique for us.

They actually finshed with us so that we could leave on Friday and we made a fast trip to Florida arriving in Ft. Myers in a couple of days.
Please read the following post on our trip to Nova Scotia with Wayne and MC, also in September. Thanks for catching up with us!