 | Dude, I am so hot, and so sweaty. Our house had the AC turned off for close to four days while we went to Mt. Desert Island, so it turned into a giant nuclear Easy-Bake Oven. The banner above is from last summer's visit to Cadillac Mountain. We didn't get there this year, but a great time was had by all. Here's the story of our adventures in Maine. As you can see, the cap was put on the truck, and the dogs rode in style... Doug didn't ride there. That's just him after helping them up into the back. |
A little background. At the end of the season last season, Aaron & Michelle needed a place to live for the winter and staying in the cabin with the outhouse wasn't an option. They both needed access to showers for work and school. So Farmer Matt upgraded them to what is lovingly referred to as "The Rathouse." It has a bathroom and kitchen, and a shower. So they wintered there on the farm.
In June, Farmer Matt's mom passed away after a long illness. Matt told Aaron & Michelle that he wanted them to go stay at her property, to protect it. Matt's mom was a world traveler. She was in China before Nixon. She has stuff from just about every continent, and boxes of stuff... There is a lot of value there, and Matt wanted someone there to be caretaker of it all until he can wrap his head around the whole place and decide what to do.
So A&M are now staying in a studio apartment above a garage at a gorgeous house in a gorgeous location on Mount Desert Island. Acres of private land, tons of beach frontage.
Two nights before our departure, Aaron calls and requests a stop at one of the many New Hampshire state fireworks stores. People are ponying up cash for us to bring the explosives. So on Thursday afternoon, we get into the truck, we stop across the border, we load up on bombage and head north.
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 | Top left, the sign outside the fireworks store. Top, Doug with the arsenal of fun. Left... a rather tacky display. It's a coffin with Osama Bin Laden's name on the front with his birthdate under it, and "Died: When you light the fuse and blow his ass to kingdom come!" I think it was about... 60 dollars, price reduced from 80. We didn't buy it. While I'm sure the fireworks inside were a quality and organized display, I think last July fourth this may have been a good seller. But it wasn't for us. We got up to the camp on Thursday night very late. Aaron had made some espionage agreement with Jessica via cell phone somewhere east of Augusta, telling her where the directions to the new location were so we could come up before bed. Only KGB agent Natalia (aka Jessie) forgot what he told her, or didn't take him very seriously. We had no idea he'd told her the secret hiding place. |
We went to bed at after getting what we needed for the immediate overnight, we figured they were already in bed over at the new house and thought nothing of their not being at the Rathouse to greet us.
The next morning Geoff was up at 6. I decided to grab a quick shower and take him to go get ice for the cooler and coffee for me and Doug. I got back to the Rathouse, and asked Doug if Aaron had come by. I told him the cell phone rang while I was in the coffee shop but no message was on the phone. Doug told me we were out of area, and the voicemail wouldn't work for us until we were back in area.
I visited the farm stand and got to play with some puppies. And because y'all know I'm such the other people's pet lover, here's the 10 week old JRT at the farm stand.
painfully adorable, eh?
We had no idea where to get in touch with A&M. We repeatedly called the phone number they'd called us at from the night before but there was no answer. So we drank coffee. We relaxed. We read. We waited. I went to ask someone at the farm stand if they could give me directions, and Aaron drives up. He was kind of confused as to why we're sitting there doing nothing. We're just as confused that he didn't come get us or leave us a note.
The following exchange isn't exact... these are approximations of quotes. But this pretty much is the gist of it:
"Jessica!" yells Aaron. "Where did I tell you the directions were last night when we made our secret spy arrangement?"
"In a silk purse in the cabin," says Jessica.
"So, Jessica, where is the silk purse?" says Aaron.
"Right there," says Jessica.
"And did you open it and get the directions?"
"No. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to..."
Turns out she was nervous about going through something of Michelle's and us yelling at her, so she opted not to touch it. I was eyeballing the purse saying "Damn, that's a nice silk purse," but I didn't take it down or open it, because it wasn't mine.
So we explained our position, how we couldn't get cellphone messages out of range. He told us that he'd called his own phone there at the Rathouse and then realized they'd unplugged the phone to bring it up to the other location. The reason why there was no answer when we called the number was he'd been calling from the phone inside Matt's Mom's house and they never heard it ring.
Jessica was fired from her spy job. She'll have to be a waitress after all, I guess. We all had a good laugh at the O. Henryness of it all. We packed up and went to Matt's Mom's house.
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| The view north, Blue Hill is obscured by haze. | The view west, towards Acadia |
It was gorgeous. Beautiful. Old, large, grey house with garage right at the ocean, with million dollar views of Blue Hill, Surrey, Trenton and Ellsworth. Matt's mom had these buddhist prayer flags hanging out from one corner of the garage to the flagpole, and I kind of choked up. I never got to meet the woman, but from all Michelle has told me her life (and her as well) seems so interesting. I would have loved to have met her, so it touched me deeply to see this little piece of her remaining at the house, flying in the sea breeze.
The place was amazing. We were floored. But there was a party to throw. The boys did the setup, Michelle, the kids and I went to Wal-mart, a trip about which I will speak later. Tents were pitched. Fireworks and dogs were unpacked. Many went swimming. And the party was started.
About 25-30 people came. All sorts of people from the island and their friends from far away places. We met a woman from Vermont who is a curriculum consultant for a company that helps homeschool parents. One of the girls from the farm had her parents, brother and his wife up from Washington DC. Everyone was interesting and smart, there were more dogs and there were kids to play with. There were even two or three ex-girlfriends of Farmer Matt. The beer was cold, the burgers great. I cheffed up some scallops
All the fireworks were brought down to the private beach and shot off to the delight of all, including neighbors who were invited over by Aaron (way to get into good graces).
Here are some pictures:
 |  Jessica made these gorgeous centerpieces with a little help from Michelle. The little tin watering cans are citronella votive candles. The whole thing looked smashing. |
| Aaron and Geoff get the party started. | |
 Top: Aaron and Jacob manning the grill and drinkin' the beer. Right: Some of the sparklers with the low light setting on my camera. I think the two girls in the picture are Nina and Lindsay. |  |
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| Jessie made friends with two little girls, I told them to stay perfectly still with the glowsticks because my camera's low light feature is funky. This is the best they could do... and it's a cool shot. | The fireworks on low light setting were weird... a lot of shadows and big white spots. Some of the shots came out neat. This is an aerial display, and on the right side you can see Doug and Aaron and someone else looking on, illuminated with the smoke and the flare. The figure in front of the fire is Matt. |
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| This is my favorite shot. Doug, Jacob and Matt in front of the ground display. | Another shot of Matt and Jacob. |
 | I think that's Kate with a huge jumbo "Morning Glory" sparkler. She was awesome... great person. Fun to meet her. Everyone had a blast. It was the funnest party I've had anything to do with for a long time. We sat on the deck later and smiled in the citronella candlelight, Aaron was especially happy and pleased. We should always have parties like this. We all slept well and deeply that night. |
Saturday Michelle had to work. Aaron, Doug, the kids, the dogs and I all went out and put out a Geocache, which is still pending approval by geocaching.com... it may be within the park boundaries according to the email they sent us, and the NPS doesn't take a good shine to geocaching.
 | Cross your fingers. Say a prayer. The cache hike was hard. The trail is an old abandoned one to a geological phenomenon called a seastack. The cache will be the best cache ever if it gets approved... ever. Sorry. We're opinionated. Aaron worked really hard finding this site, and no one ever ever ever goes here. I'll cry like a great big fat baby if they email me back a no go. |
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| Our Geocache container before it left for its destination... with Jessie's lovely centerpiece. | Geoff struggles up the rocky trail. |
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| Jessapillar relaxes at the seastack. | Aaron and Doug after hiding the cache. |
| Right: Aaron records the coordinates at the seastack. We did another cache on the island right after we hid ours. This one was very near the farm, on private land with a waterfall and a fresh water pool. The dogs were refreshed by the cold and fresh water, seeing as they'd been ocean swimming incessantly since we got there. The bugs were vicious and I think I was woozy for loss of blood. We got home and had a fabulous steak dinner, and other assorted left overs... then took a nice walk down to the ocean to check out the low low tide tidepools. And the sunset. |  |
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| Aaron along the rugged and slippery coast. | Doug and Geoff in the sunset light... |
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| Top Left: Geoff makes a silly face. Top right, Jessica and a dog in the fading glow. We found unspent fireworks in the rubble of the original display, and spent time blowing more stuff up in what Jessie refers to as "Fourth of July, Junior." They were mostly spinners, so Aaron pounded them to a stake in the yard, and they did spin. Later that night, Blue Hill did their fireworks show and from Aaron and Michelle's posh little deck we could see all the high up fireworks. It was a nice ending to a hard day. We all slept well and deeply that night also. |  |
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 | Sunday morning dawned early. There were noisy birds and the dogs had to pee. I got up at 6 and had the lower deck behind the main house all to myself. Geoff got up a little while later. I made him breakfast and we waited for everyone else to get up. It was Aaron's birthday, so we had a birthday breakfast that couldn't be beat once everyone was up... and then Geoff wanted to swim again, so we went down and enjoyed one last romp in the ocean. We hit the road between 12:30 and noon, tired, sweaty, but very happy with our trip. I had a blast and could so use another long weekend... today!
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It just occured to me -- I only have one picture of me, and none of Michelle! How'd that happen?
Weird. Michelle -- I'll snap ya later! (echoes of a certain wedding toast there...)
Traffic was okay until we hit Portland. Then it was a 3 hour crawl to our house. We were heading home in order to meet Tess at the airport... I'm glad I asked Amy & Taunia to go get her because I somehow knew this traffic thing would snarl us.
Tess flew in from Alaska and this is the first leg of her East/Midwest tour of fellow bloggers. Right now she's asleep in Geoff's bedroom. It's after 10am, and I'm not sure how long I should let her sleep.
She may be mad... "You let me sleep away my Boston Area Vacation!!!" but I figure the jetlag has to have kicked her butt. It was so cool meeting her, and I figure I'll take her to Newburyport and maybe up to Portsmouth today... have a relaxing drive around and walkabout. It should be a hot one today and tomorrow. I took off of work, so hopefully it won't be a nightmare when I get back there!
Right then. I'll update later, I'm sure. This has been one of the longest entries EVER. Hope you liked the pictures -- I sure enjoyed everything we did and can't wait to go back.
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