Monday, September 12, 2011

Our last week in Maine


This is the last week that we will be in Maine although the trailer will be here for the next couple weeks while we are in France.  We left the Rockland and Camden area on the 7th and made the drive to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park.  We had visited here when we did the cruise several years ago and had wanted to return to have some more time to explore. 

We have explored the park and several of its hiking trails since we have been here.  We will leave to drive back to Portland, Maine on Wednesday for a couple of days before our flight out to Paris on Friday, the 16th.  We will be in France for 2 weeks and will return on the 29th.  We are going to store the RV in Portland for the 2 weeks we will be gone and then will start the long 40+ hour drive back to Denver on Sept 30.  We are not looking forward to that!!

Here are a couple of highlights from this last week.

Can you think of a more beautiful place to relax and read a book?  This is Acadia National Park near thunder hole.

Matt on our easy hike around Jordan Pond. 

Me scrambling down the rocky face of Bubble Mountain on the way back to Jordan Pond below.

Monday, September 5, 2011

Maine - Week in Review

Well, I am hoping that this post actually goes out to everyone as it seems my last one did not.  There are times when Blogger and I really don't get along.

As you might have guessed, we came through Hurricane Irene just fine.  The rain started for us on Saturday night and continued most of Sunday.  We only ended up getting about 2 inches of rain and about 37 mph winds.  We had a couple branches hit the top of the RV, but nothing too serious (or at least we hope not as Matt hasn't been up there yet).

The weather here has been spectacular!!!  Since the hurricane moved out, it has been sunny and in the 70's all week.  We are so spoiled!!!  We spent this week exploring around the Camden and Rockland area.

On Monday we visited the town of Bath and its Maine Marine Museum.  It was a great museum and we also toured the Bath Iron Works with its huge ship bays for building destroyers for the US Navy. They were currently building the Zumwalt class of destroyers in multiple pieces to be put together to form the ship.
We were not allowed to have cameras on the tour but this is a view of what the Iron Works is.
This is a model of what the Zumwalt class is - Very different!


On Tuesday, we visited Camden Hills State Park and drove to the top of the Mt. Battie.  We were less than impressed when the park ranger told us that the drive to the top would take us up 780 feet, however, when we reached the top, we were very impressed with the views of Penobscot Bay and Camden harbor.
Camden Harbor from the top of Mt. Battie.


On Wednesday and Thursday, we visited Matt's cousin Tim and Lili out on the beautiful island of Vinal Haven.  It took us a little over an hour via ferry to reach the island from Rockland and we enjoyed relaxing on the deck of "the Shack" with its beautiful views of the ocean.  We could not have asked for better company, better weather or a more fantastic lobster dinner!

Matt, Lili & Tim enjoying the views from the deck of "the Shack"

On Friday, we sailed on the Schooner Yacht Heron from Rockport harbor over to Camden harbor.  It was the start of the Labor Day festivities so we were a part of the "parade" of windjammers that were sailing from all over into the Camden harbor.  Another beautiful day coupled with gorgeous old tall ships!!

This is the Heron that we sailed on.

Several of the windjammers at sail.

Ahhh...  this is the life!!!

Several more windjammers at sail in the parade with us.

On Saturday, we were actually able to tour on board a couple of the windjammers in Camden harbor.  Beautiful boats!!