Beating The Heat

White Lake Photos Here
Acadia Photos Here

Well our summer vacation season has officially begun. With any luck we'll have a week at Camp in August and then to finish it off a wedding down the cape Labor Day weekend, possibly followed by a few more days off right after that. To start it off however we took most of the past week off and headed north to White Lake and then Acadia for some camping. This year Jen's parents (Bupee and Dew if didn't know that's what Brooke calls them) joined us up there.

It was a perfect week to be near a lake and the ocean as temps climbed to 96, 96 and 97 the first few days. It limited our hiking, as 97 and humid isn't great for anyone to hike in, never mind someone who's three month's pregnant (in case you didn't know yes Jen is 3 months along) so we were limited there but the water must have been at least 75 degrees so we spent a lot of time in and on it. The one day we tried to do Mt. Washington's auto road, the zip line and alpine slides it was too hazy or cloudy to bother with the road and a dark gray cloud made us rush back to cover everything at amp in case it rained so we missed out on the other stuff too. I guess there's always next time.

Temps were a bit more mild in Maine, regulated by some dense ocean fog a lot of the time, which also screwed up the hiking plans but made everyone much more comfortable. We did some sight seeing and climbed around the top of Cadillac Mountain for a while, as well as strolling through town and walking on the sand bar and Jen and I took Brooke to the beach.

Overall even with the heat and a bit of driving, 1054 miles I think for us, everyone got along very well. We ate very well also, as Paul loves to cook, so we had much better food than we usually do. Omelettes, pancakes, french toast, ribs, meat house burgers, steak tips and more. Everyone had a great time, I think. I know we did anyhow. Hopefully they did too. Now that they've seen both places next time we'll probably limit it to one or the other as the drive was a bit much for all three ladies. Anyhow I'll finish up my book here as Jen calls it by saying if you want to see the pictures there were a lot so they're broken down into two parts. White Lake and Acadia. You can click either one to take you there. I guess that's about it for now.

Life's A Beach...

Click on the image above to see the panorama of the beach

...for Brooke anyhow. She loves it, and gets to go quite often. I always hated it but lately since she likes it so much I'm starting to enjoy it. This past Sunday to beat the heat we headed up to Ogunquit Beach with Ryan and Kristy. None of us had ever been but I had read how nice the beach was and Ryan had also seen it ranked somewhere as one of the best in New England. He also saw Barnacle Billy's, which is in Perkins Cove in Ogunquit, on the Phantom Gourmet and wanted to check it out. The beach has a family section and a, um, alternative lifestyle section you might say. If you're walking along and hit the all guys, Speedos only section like we did you know you went a bit too far. Fortunately Brooke has no idea what's going on at this age so we settled down right in the neutral zone where there was plenty of space. It's on an Island about three miles long with light colored sand and not a rock in sight. Not something you'd expect in Maine. One side was the ocean and the other was the Ogunquit River and there were tall grassy dunes separating them in the middle. It reminded me a lot of the Outer Banks in North Carolina. The water wasn't quite as nice, more like what you'd expect in Maine and only 60 degrees, but we enjoyed it all the same. After that we had dinner at Barnacle Billy's, which was also very good, except the rum punch. More like fruit punch, so I'd skip that, but the fried seafood platter was right up there with Petey's as one of the best. It was a fun day, of course there's pictures too, just click here if you want to see some. That's all for now.