Farewell to Maine

Heading home this afternoon, after a delightful few days on Mt. Desert Isle.

Little Long Pond, yesterday; this is a great walk for people not up to steep uphill climbs.

Starfish hiding under the dock at low tide.

Hope I come back next year.

More From Maine

Herons on the dock this morning, testing out the 10x magnification on my new phone. Not bad.

Osprey nest that guards the entrance to our driveway, with one of the parents on a nearby tree. They make so much fuss when you get close that they must have babies up there.

Today's big event was climbing Sargent Mountain (1378 feet) via the South Ridge Trail, 7 miles round trip, 1200 feet up. The great thing about these "mountains" is that they are bald on top, and hiking up there is like walking in the sky.

Lovely boulder.

Sunset from our dock.

Some Maine Pics

We drove up to Mt. Desert Isle in the rain, and the first day looked like this.

Today we took our traditional first hike, up a hill called Beech Mountain. Lovely views from the top. 

Me and two of my sons.

My favorite part of the Beech Mountain hike is the descent through what I always think of as the valley of ferns and moss.

Then this afternoon I went out on a sea kayak with my son Robert, and he took this pic of mother and baby harbor porpoises. We also saw a seal and many birds.

Shadow dragon. You may be thinking that a dragon could not hide its body behind that skinny tree, but you are forgetting that dragons have eldritech powers and can pass between worlds with ease.

Vacation 2009, Part II

Last year I taught my three older children to play Dungeons and Dragons. Thomas loves it and badgers me constantly to play, but Mary and Robert will only play when there is nothing else to do. In Maine after dark, in our little house without cable tv or xbox, there was often nothing to do, and we played almost every night. We taught Ben to play, and he took to it like a fish to water, or an otter to sliding, or a chimp to making hooting sounds, or something. I asked him what the best part of our trip to Maine, he said, "Dungeons and Dragons!!!" Thomas came home so into it that he has started running a game for his friends, and the maps he has drawn are the neatest and most careful things he has ever drawn or written.

All of which I think is pretty cool.

But back in Maine -- on Thursday my brother arrived at my sister's place on the busy, stylish part of the island (Northeast Harbor). I took several children over. We went sea kayaking, my sister taking Clara in her boat, me taking Ben, and Robert and Thomas in a boat together. Robert had never steered before, and we later discovered that his boat had a balky rudder, so he had lots of trouble. Of course he blamed Thomas, and they proceeded to squabble and shout there way across the harbor, paddling in circles. I took pictures which I assure you were both poignant and hilarious but lost them when I dropped my camera in the harbor. :-(

Friday I went on a great hike with my brother and my 18-year-old niece, who walks a great deal faster than I do. We went up the Beehive, a famous steep hike with lots of iron ladders. We were there at 8 AM and went up with no trouble. Getting there early is important, because this is such a popular hike that by 10 the trail is clogged with people struggling up very slowly. We descended the other side of the hill on a more gradual slope down to a pond called The Bowl, where we watched huge tadpoles and schools of minnows swim in the crystal clear water. Then we went up another mountain the name of which escapes me. Back at my sister's we divided into kayaks for a paddle of over a mile across the harbor to Little Cranberry Island. I was with Mary in the kayak with the balky rudder, and we took such a twisting course that we added at least half a mile to the route. I arrived quite tired. And then had to paddle back.

Meanwhile, Lisa had Clara and the boys and went to the Sand Beach, where they played in the water.

Saturday we headed home via our friends David and Lori's house in Acton, Massachusetts. We were early and our children were restless, so we went to Concorde and stopped by the North Bridge unit of the battlefield. There, on April 19, 1775, American militia were first ordered to fire on British troops, beginning a battle that lasted for hours as Americans harassed the British retreat. We tried to impress a little of the history on our unruly brood but for them it was mainly a sunny place to run and play. One thing I love about my children is how much fun they can have with just an open place to run in.

We played Pooh Sticks on the North Bridge. (Terminological note: Pooh Sticks is what this game seems to be called, but I invented it myself as a child without ever reading A.A. Milne, as no doubt have thousands of other children, since it is a perfectly obvious thing to do, so I don't much care for the name. Pooh has no claim on this game. But I suppose it has to be called something.)

We ran in the field. We climbed a tree. Our sons roughhoused.

And I, at least, spent a while looking at the spot and thinking about what happened there 234 years ago. It was one of the most fun parts of the trip, an absolutely delightful hour.

Vacation 2009, Part I

Just back from a week on Mount Desert Island in Maine, stomping around Acadia National Park. There was no internet connection in our house, so I haven't been online in more than a week, something that I think hasn't happened in at least two years.

But even without access to my blog I think about how I will write on it, so I have been journaling in my head all week, and taking pictures. Here, late, is my account of the 2009 Bedell family vacation.

We -- me, Lisa, Robert, Thomas, Ben, and Clara -- drove up, a 14-hour trek. Lisa's mother Carole and our daughter Mary flew up to Portland and joined us on Mount Desert Island in a rented black sports car that Mary dubbed the Batmobile. (Na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na Carole!) On the first day, Friday, July 24, we drove to Cambridge, Massachusetts and stayed with my mother, who fed us dinner. On Saturday we drove to Mount Desert Island along the coastal route through a long string of charming towns. Every time we do this Lisa and I fantasize about coming up this way without our children to stay in one of the amazing bed and breakfasts, explore these towns and enjoy each other, but so far this remains a dream. We spent about 20 minutes sitting in a traffic jam that turned out to be caused by a moose peacefully munching moose moss about fifty yards from the road, looking so much like a moose that everyone driving by had to stop and take a picture.

We arrived at our house around 5 PM. We stayed at the same place we stayed last time, a charming but decrepit little house called the Lyford Cottage. This is a long way from the more exciting and stylish parts of the island, in the town of Tremont near Bass Harbor. The house is on the ocean and has a wonderful view across a little body of water called Duck Cove, where there are always ducks, which is as it should be and pleases me to no end. Sometimes there are loons that wake us in the middle of the night with their mad singing. The house is slowly declining into a pile of lumber, aided by armies of carpenter ants. It has about enough hot water for half a shower or a third of a bath, the kitchen is fairly primitive, the beds are decidedly primitive, there's no heat, and when it is cold and wet out it is cold and wet inside, too. And, as I said, no internet. But it does have a resident squirrel.

When we arrived the whole island was shrouded in fog and all we could see looking across the cove was more fog.

It was damp and chilly both Sunday and Monday. Undeterred, I dragged my children up Beech Mountain on Sunday and Acadia Mountain on Monday.

The "mountains" on Mount Desert Island are really hills, but they have steep sides that make for rigorous hiking and they are bare on top, so you can experience hiking above the tree line and still get back in time for a nice lobster lunch in Bar Harbor. It's a very civilized sort of ruggedness. We also went tidepooling at a place called Seawall where the low tide leaves an acre or so of lovely little pools full of seaweed, mussels, snails, limpets, and sometimes other things like crabs, hermit crabs, and fish.

Tuesday was a brilliant, sunny day and I celebrated by talking Robert and Thomas into undertaking a 5-mile hike with me up 1373-foot Sargent Mountain. This brought home to me how much older and fatter I am than the last time I tried such a hike, I guess about five years ago. Thomas keeps saying that I tried to kill him and that he will never go hiking with me again. It was hard and we ran out of water, but it was also beautiful and exhilirating. Walking on top of any of Mount Desert's mountains is like walking in the sky, with a glorious post card world spread out beneath.

Wednesday we went whale watching. Unfortunately the fog was back, so we steamed off into a cloud where, I thought, finding a whale was about as likely as finding a mermaid. It didn't matter to Lisa and me. We just love the thrill of riding one of those big steel catamarans across the ocean at 32 knots, soaring over the swells and plunging into the troughs, salt spray in the wind that whips across our faces. As it turns out we did see a whale, a juvenile humpback who surfaced, gave up a flick of his tail flukes, and then dove out of sight, such a brief encounter that they decided it didn't fulfill the guarantee of seeing whales and gave us vouchers for a free trip another time. One of the good things about being married to Lisa is that in two or three years when we go back she will be able to find them.