Pawtuckaway, Chebeague, Lighthouses, Sea Glass & More!

  

Summer sadly is flying by. July is almost over leaving just 5 more weeks until Labor Day weekend. We try to keep busy and do something with the girls every chance we get and the last two weeks have been no exception. For starters Brooke, Emily and I went back to Pawtuckaway a couple weekends ago when Jen was working for a hike and afternoon at the lake with Sophia, Charlene and Paul and we did a nice little loop hike up the South Peak on a warm day to the tower which was followed up perfectly with a few hours of fun in the lake. Sophia seems to enjoy hiking and it's always good to have someone along to keep Brooke motivated so it works out well to have her go with us. Hopefully now that Sophia has hiked Acadia, Stratham Hill and Pawtuckaway we can get her up to the White Mountains so she can see what the really big mountains are like but for now there are pictures from that trip here if you want to check them out.

To finish off our first year of sea glass collecting we have been busy beach combing from Hampton to Portland. We saw a baby seal lounging on the beach last week but for once I didn't have my camera with me so there's no pictures of that. There are however plenty to go around from our frequent trips to Odiorne as well as a trip up the coast to the Kennebunkport area where we actually had to work hard to find a beach with sea glass. Who knew there were so many sandy beaches in Maine!? All we could find were miles and miles of soft sandy beaches. Perfect if we wanted a beach day but not so perfect for sea glass hunting. We did however find two more lighthouses along the way that we'd never seen before. Goat Island light in Cape Porpoise and Wood Island light in Biddefored Pool were both new to us so we added them to our list of visited/seen lighthouses. I also got up to see the sunrise one morning from Agamenticus but the gate was locked so I wound up at the Nubble lighthouse. Those three were just the tip of the lighthouse iceberg, as in the last week we also saw Whaleback and White Island lights from Odiorne and Portsmouth harbor from the Newcastle commons when we were at a birthday party. That makes 6 but we weren't done there! 

For the grand sea glass finale we made the trip back to Chebeague Island in Casco Bay where it all began, this time with Danny and his friend Kim for a day last weekend. Besides the boat ride, which Brooke said she really liked, we gathered up a couple pounds of glass, picnicked, jumped into the refreshing Atlantic for a swim and wandered the island getting some sun and having some fun. It was a great way to spend a nice summer day and end our first 365 days of sea glass collecting. The boat ride out to the island takes you past 4 more lighthouses. Portland Breakwater, Spring Point, Portland Head and Pocahontas lights. We'd seen them all before so nothing new but that brought our total for the week to 10 lighthouses. Not too shabby : ) and there are pictures of that stuff right here if you're interested.    

If you want to know anything else about these or the many other lighthouses in Maine there's a great site you can click right here http://www.lighthousefriends.com/me.html. If your interested in more about sea glass there's a really good site for that also right here http://www.odysseyseaglass.com/.

That's about it for the last couple of weeks. On deck is my fathers 60th birthday, camp at Lake Winnipesaukee, hopefully some hikes and I'm sure more of Brooke's new favorite past time of sea glass collecting so you can check back in a little while to see what's new with us but that's all for now! 

Camping In Pawtuckaway

Last weekend we met Chris and his family all the way over in Nottingham at Pawtuckaway State Park for a night of camping and a weekend of fun. They had never been camping before and the place they wanted to try it for a night happened to be right up the road from us, so it was a much different experience than our usual long drives and packing everything but the kitchen sink. We packed what we needed for a night, which was surprisingly still a lot, and made the 25 minute drive over there to set up everything Saturday after lunch. Once that was set we got to relax and have fun. The campground was just a bit rowdier than most that we go to but nothing terrible. After the fireworks died out from the houses along the opposite lake shore the only real noise was the loons calling and the fires crackling.

With all it had to do Pawtuckaway was a surprisingly nice little local park for a quick day or weekend trip. It has a great sandy beach with cool clear water, which we spent a lot of time in, and canoe rentals that we took advantage of for an picnic lunch and site-seeing tour. EMS was also having a free demo weekend with kayaks and stand up paddle boards, aka SUP's. The kids, especially Tyler, had fun with the kayaks and almost everyone else tried out the SUP's too, which were interesting and fun for a bit but seemed like they could get pretty boring after a while. I'd definitely choose a kayak over them if I had to buy one but have always seen people out in the ocean on one and wanted to try one. Now I can say I have at least even if it wasn't my favorite thing in the world. Mix in some drinks, a campfire and some s'mores and you wind up with a quick and easy getaway weekend, if you like camping that is. My parents even joined us for everything but the overnight part, although they stayed for a big chunk of that too so really they only missed out on about 8 hours of sleeping in a tent, which was probably fine with them.

The only thing we didn't squeeze in that they wanted to do was a hike but it was so hot and nice out we decided to stay near the water most of the time. Jen, Brooke and I have done it before and we can all go do that one some other time when they visit. It's probably a very nice little hike in the fall I'd guess, as the views aren't overwhelming but with some foliage it'd be a pretty nice hike. Hopefully they liked their trial run of camping enough that we can go back or go somewhere else sometime. For now the pictures are here from this trip along with a couple from the 4th. Hope you enjoy them!

Summer Vacation In Acadia

 

 
Well summer has finally arrived and it wasted no time getting hot hot hot. Of course as soon as we were ready to head up the coast with Jens parents and cousin Sophia to Acadia for a week of camping on summer vacation it wasted no time cooling off again and bringing the rain in. The weather wasn't perfect, usually half a day was decent and the other half was rainy, and we even got one day with just a brief shower and sunshine otherwise. Of course the shower happened while we were at the beach, but that's just the way this trip went. Not exactly what you'd want for a summer camping trip but not a washout either. The glass half full (of Captain and Coke and Italian margaritas) guy in me would say it could have been much much worse and it definitely beat spending the week at work. Mix in good people and good food and you end up with a good vacation no matter what mother nature sends your way.

The one downside to the ever changing weather was we didn't get in as much hiking as we'd planned to and there was no deep sea fishing or boat rides happening this time. Since it Sophia's first camping trip and she was very excited about the mountains I wanted to get her out on some nice hikes. Unfortunately a shorter hike up South Bubble and to Bubble Rock and a couple walks were all we managed this time, but the mountains will be there again when we return and we return often, hopefully she'll go with us again soon. We also drove to the easternmost point in the US where Quoddy Head lighthouse is located on the Bay of Fundy, but it was in the fog so we didn't see much of the scenery the area is noted for. Bus rides, ice cream, a couple nice dinners out, poking in the souvenir shops, campfires, beach combing, games etc rounded out our week. We definitely made the best of it and had a good time doing it. Hopefully everyone else on the trip enjoyed it enough to go back because we still have a long list of things we want to do there in the future and can't wait to go back, as long as we take the highway this time and not the 7 hour long scenic route!

I tried to pick out my favorites from the trip but there's still a lot of pictures if you want to see them. You can pick through the ones you want here or if you want to see them all there's a slide show here instead. If you're not sick of us by then there's a video below of the girls getting "Footloose" last night. That should be enough for a bit but eventually there will be more stuff here to see so check back in a while. That's all for now!