Side trip

This piece of gorgeous Maine coastline might look familiar to some of my long-time readers. Five years ago (really?! has it been that long?) my brother, sister and I journeyed to New England for our first sib-trip. One of our stops was with a generous friend on Great Cranberry Island.

This time, Henry was able to experience this super-cool island. Which made him very happy since he's not used to me having been to an exotic locale before him.

Unfortunately, the weather this time around wasn't nearly as nice as my pictures show that it was last time. So we weren't able to do as much sightseeing as we wanted to around the island, given the wet conditions and our lack of appropriate footwear and extra clothes.

But it was a great visit. We did get to see quite a bit, played some games, ate some lobster, and enjoyed relaxing and watching the birds at our friend's feeders.

Here's another shot from our short walk out to the shoreline...

I really love those mossy rocks! As much fun as beaches are, I think my favorite coastlines are ones like this.  

And speaking of the moss and the moisture, I got a couple of interesting closeups. So much more decoration on these shoreline rocks than on those we see in the dryer mountains...The drops of dew (or rain) on this spiderweb make it look like a jeweled cape, don't they? (I think the orange objects below are just plants, but I guess they might be the limbs of the critters who spun the web?! But they'd be awfully big...)

Not far away from this gem, I saw another, this crevice filled with floating greenstuff that looked like the hair of some Irish sea creature...

Like on our previous visit, and elsewhere this year, flowers were in abundance...

Honeysuckle

Native spiraea

Weigela

As if to make up for the lack of sight-seeing we were able to do on the island, we had a special treat on our return ferry ride back to Southwest Harbor.

There was a sailboat race of some kind going on, and we were able to watch it most of the way across the channel.

Aren't they lovely craft? And so yar!

On the land portion of our journey to and from Great Cranberry, we crossed the Penobscot Narrows Bridge. 

In 2011, we not only did that but also went up into its observatory, which you can see in a closeup at right.

This time we didn't have time for that, but, boy, it is an impressive structure!

The red line in the photo below points to the pilings for the old bridge, which was still there 5 years ago. Now the new one, and a historical marker, are all that's there.

So, it does pay to re-visit the sites of old trips: you never know what might be different!

GCI: Island as garden

Our hostess' garden was the floral highlight of our visit to Great Cranberry, and most of the photos in this post were taken around her cottage. But the flowers all over the island were almost as impressive as hers.

The lupines, in particular, are simply amazing, no matter what their color...

...or what other flowers were nearby...

How would you like to have this patch of purple outside your kitchen window?

Purple definitely seems to be the dominant color in the photos I took. Here are some cultivated iris, but there were also wild ones in the woods!


More purples (consulting my flower book, I'm guessing "Venus' Looking Glass"? a bluebell relative)...

But other colors were equally dazzling, from the common, like these roses...

... to this spectacular wigelia, a new shrub to me, perfectly complementing this picturesque gate...

I was very taken with these flowers and couldn't resist some close-up photos, too. Aren't they gorgeous?

Colors aren't even needed to make fabulous flowers, as evidenced by this viburnum...

...another set of blossoms I had to use the macro setting on...

More lovely white flowers help make this funky old well a decorative highlight of the yard...

And here's a better shot of the well...which was a perfect emblem of Great Cranberry for me: lovely, interesting, intriguing, quirky. Just about sums it up!

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More flower photos are in this Flickr set. I've grouped the flower pix at the end. And Photos from the whole trip (including many not used in the blog posts) are in this Flickr collection.

GCI: life is good

...and how could it not be, when you can look about you and see sights like this?

Although we were only able to spend a couple of days on Great Cranberry Isle, I certainly understand why our hostess loves it there. And I sympathize with her when she complains about how hard it is to leave.

Relaxing and visiting took up a lot of our time, in addition to the walks described in my last post.

And also in addition to eating, which we did very well...

our lobster dinner prior to preparation (slightly blurry due to photographer's fear of snapping?)

sacrificed lobster on my plate

The yummy crustaceans were, of course, locally purchased. Although not from the lobsterman whose pots we saw in his yard on our walk to "town." (see right)

He, obviously, hadn't put his pots out yet, but fortunately others have, and our dinner was obtained at the town pier just hours before we consumed it.

Support of local economy by enjoying a delicious and rare delicacy! Can't beat that for a vacation experience!

So you see that some folks on the island actually do work there for a living. But most of its summer visitors (as opposed to the 35 residents who winter over) are either short- or long-term vacationers.

But some folks do other kinds of things that aren't ordinarily associated with vacationing, like serving in the military (see the memorial on the left).

And, even, making it their final resting place...



On our various strolls around the island we saw all kinds of interesting houses of varying degrees of luxuriousness...

attractive GCI vacation house complete with colorful sea-faring decorations

the former Hamor Tea House, now privately owned
but once a no doubt swank watering hole for GCI-ers

But we found our hostess' lovely place to be the most delightful on the island. Here she is with friends and amazingly beautiful landscaping:

If you want to see even more of the fabulous flowers blooming all over the island, stay tuned. My next post will feature GCI flora. And there are more photos of all kinds in my Cranberry Isle Flickr set.

Plus, photos from the whole trip (including many not used in the blog posts) are in this Flickr collection.

Wordless Wednesday: lawn ornaments, Cranberry-Isle-style

GCI: Sea & Shore

The second phase of our New England adventure took us to the magical land of the Cranberry Isles. (The GCI of my title is Great Cranberry Isle and there is a Little Cranberry as well.)

What a wonderful place to relax, visit with friends, throw sticks for the dog, work puzzles, eat lobster, and generally just really, really enjoy the life we're lucky enough to live.

view across Great Cranberry Isle's Pool
back toward Mount Desert and Cadillac Mountain

Here's what the Isles looked like, cartographically, back in the late 1800's, according to the photo my brother cleverly took in the Great Harbor Museum in Northeast Harbor (where we caught the ferry to GCI)...

Our ferry landed at the top of the island, at the pier in this pleasant little harbor:

The island is served by a people-only ferry, worlds different from the large car ferries that we are used to seeing along the Gulf coast.

There was an interesting discussion going on while we waited to board at Northeast Harbor. Some of the ferrymen seemed to think that the Sea Queen was having some difficulties and that they needed to bring up another boat for us. And after hearing bits of this conversation, we thought that sounded like a good idea.

However, less conservative heads prevailed and we pulled out on the little boat you see on the left here. We made it to the island just fine. However, on our return journey we rode another ferry and heard that the Sea Queen was in for repairs!

Since this is the only way to get from the "mainland" of Mount Desert Island to the Cranberries [relatively] cheaply, all kinds of goods, as well as people, take these little ferries. They just load bulkier items up on top while your suitcases stay with you below. I'm sure after a few weeks this system becomes rather cumbersome, especially since, even in the summer, the ferries run only every 2 hours. But for our brief visit it was only part of the charm and adventure of the Cranberry Isles.

It's not too surprising that some folks use the ferries as sight-seeing vehicles. When you get views like these from aboard:

lovely islands on view during the ferry ride
(we think the larger one is Sutton Island)

looking back toward Mount Desert as we approached GCI's harbor

Even when you're not blessed with the glorious weather we had during most of our visit, the fog makes for great photo opps as well...

As scenic as the journey over to GCI is, the most wonderful sea viewing experiences require the more intimate activity of walking around the island. Here's my sister on a spectacular bit of headland during one of our island walks...

How fabulous to have spaces like this hardly 10 minutes from where you rest your head at night:

Our only regret was that both of our walks happened at low tides. It would be really neat to see these shorelines with more dramatic wave action. But they were gorgeous all the same...

I was particularly taken with the incredibly brightly colored lichen that decorated a lot of these rocks.


It pays to look down and enjoy the micro-views on offer, too, doesn't it, even when the wide-angle shots are so amazing.

colorful pebbles make up GCI's "beaches"
(I limited myself to 3 small souvenirs, but it was hard!)neat rocks & the sea...an unbeatable scenic combination

We three visitors from very different climes really enjoyed soaking up the strange beauty of the Maine coast:

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You won't be surprised to hear that I took well over 100 photos on GCI. You can see more of them in this Flickr set. And my next post will give you a glimpse of what life on magical Great Cranberry is like.

Photos from the whole trip (including many not used in the blog posts) are in this Flickr collection.