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!

Portland churches of various kinds

OK, this isn't really a church but as far as I'm concerned it's just as sacred a space...it's the Portland Public Library. Specifically the lobby in the downtown main building. We went to story time here a couple of times with the Amazing Granddaughter and I also got some supplementary reading for myself.

Schools are another category of sacred spaces. Here's Deering High School, with an impressive main building worthy of a small college...

Memorials of any kind (not to mention cemeteries) also count as church-like spaces, making one stop amid the bustle of everyday life to contemplate something larger and more serious. Here's a Civil War memorial in the middle of downtown Portland. The glass-fronted building behind it is the Library; you can probably pick out the distinctive light fixtures from the picture above just inside...

In addition to these not-really-churches, there are lots of gorgeous actual church buildings around town, and I was able to snap shots of a few...

impressive steeple on St. Joseph's Convent 

Deering Community Church, conveniently across the street from a nice coffeeshop

State Street Church

Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (snapped from the car)

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Thanks to the AG's equally amazing Mom for help with identifying these structures!

Wordless Wednesday: one cloud and many boats

Maine flowers, part 2: around town

So many lovely flowers in and around Portland! When you don't have too much time for things to bloom, I suppose you can't help but just pull out all the stops.

Here's some more lovely blooms from the kids' neighborhood and further afield.

The first few are decorative touches in and around the Brentwood Farms Community Garden—we went there a lot because the Amazing Granddaughter likes the scarecrow, plus it's right across the street from Evergreen Cemetery, a favorite walk destination.

These cute, waxy buttercups are abundant in Baxter Pines, another favorite walking spot:

For most of the rest of these, I can't tell you where they were taken, but I hope you enjoy them just the same...

Maine woods, Part 1

I've been lucky enough to be on trips to opposite corners of this wonderful country already this year. And the trees which grace both of these areas are so marvelous in their diversity and lushness (especially compared to the usually parched region I'm in most of the time).

A few months ago I shared with you some fabulous trees of the Pacific Northwest, so now it's the Northeast's turn.

First up are some beauties from Bunganut Pond. My generous and knowledgeable hosts are into trees, too (not living in them, just liking them ), so we got into some good discussions about species identification and so on.

Red pines and white pines, birches and beeches, aspens and poplars, hemlock, spruce and fir...we hashed it all out. Of course, I probably won't remember enough of this new-found knowledge to be able label these photos correctly, but I'll give it a shot.

I can tell you that the lovely contrast in the photo above on the right is made by hemlock branches upstaging the white of a paper birch trunk.

Here's a close-up of another birch that was shedding some of that paper; easy to see how inventive and industrious folks could make canoes out of this, isn't it?

An the hemlocks were full of new growth, which, along with interesting bark, is one of my favorite things to snap when I'm around trees...

The shores of the pond are simply choked with green, as I saw on my brief kayak sojourn to a neighboring cove...

The pines might be the most spectacular residents of the area...

...but the deciduous trees put on quite a show at this time of year, and make me want to come back in the fall when they'll be decked out in their leaf-peeping finery...

I've always gotten birches and beeches mixed up before, mainly because I have trouble remembering which one Robert Frost wrote about. (It's birches; thanks, Google.) But mostly because I hardly ever get to see either one here in Texas. Here are both of them, side by side on the shores of Bungant Pond:

Of course, looking through leaves and branches at interesting stuff beyond is fun for the photographer, too. Here I found three generations of Amens ...

The sun setting on the other side of the pond, after a fun day of games, boating, swimming, and tree tourism, made those tall pines look even more amazing...

Trees, beautiful trees! Next up I'll probably go back to show you some more flowers, but don't worry, I have many more lovely and interesting trees to show you from other parts of Maine that I visited. Stay tuned!

Wordless Wednesday: watch out!

Upta camp!

I have learned that this is the New England expression that would translate here into "to the lake" or "to the ranch" or to some other weekend destination.

In the case of my daughter-in-law's lovely family, "camp" is a charming what-we-would-call-cabin on this beautiful body of water named Bunganut Pond on the maps. 

"Pond" or "lake?" While not being as big as the Hill Country lakes we are more familiar with, it's certainly larger than the cattle tanks that are normally called ponds around here.

Of course, I've often said that some of our "rivers" wouldn't even qualify as named creeks in the moister northeast. So I guess it's not surprising that they call a lake that takes you 15 minutes or so to circumnavigate in a motorboat a "pond." Regional differences in terminology like this are one of the most interesting things about traveling, don't you think?

But, like "a rose by any other name," whatever you call it, this is a delightful place to spend a few summer days. (Winter would be intriguing, too, although perhaps not delightful; usually the pond freezes over!)

The first day we arrived, it was windy and actually a little too chilly for water-related activities. (So nice to be able to say this when it was close to 100° back home.) But later we not only took motorboat rides, but swam some in the clear, spring-fed water, and even got to kayak!

Here's Hal on an expedition to a neighboring cove...

...here's a kayak-level view of Bunganut's lovely water from my boat...

...as well as an even closer look when I took a dip...

As I write this, back in sweltering San Antonio, remembering the feel of that cool water is so refreshing!

Here are some other snaps of this peaceful, relaxing place...

Loons!

rocks like this one make motorboat navigation a bit tricky, but
fortunately kayaks don't have this problem

lily pads and sunlight on the surface

the dock and late afternoon, liquid-gold sunlight,
from the screen porch

There were patches of the surface covered with lots of pine needles, leaves, and seeds from some of the many gorgeous trees surrounding the pond. In my next post, I'll show you more about these beauties.

As if we didn't need another reason to love it here, the sunsets are terrific!

Thanks again to my generous in-laws for sharing this lovely spot with us!