just biding my time

This has certainly been a non-traveling year. We had some tax problems that kept us at home for the travel season. It was really disappointing not to travel but actually fun being in Maine for the summer.

My 89 year old mother decided that she wanted a screened porch on the front of her house. for the last several years she has kept a couple of lawn chairs at the head of her driveway but that is not a great place to sit. Her neighbor on that side keeps his yard looking like an old fashioned dump with crap piled up all over the place. It is not a pretty sight. She got to thinking about camp and the screened in porch she and my father had there. They pretty much lived on that porch for the summer and she longed for a structure like that.

She hired a 74 year old carpenter who does enough to keep out of trouble. He took the job with the idea that we would work with him. That would reduce the labor costs and provide him with help for the hard/heavy parts. Since we were home for the summer, that worked out really well. The porch came out really well and we all had fun building it (and I wasn't responsible for the design and overall schedule).

We spent a long weekend with some friends from church on a windjammer cruise out of Rockport Maine. We were on the Schooner Timberwind. The boat belongs to the daughter of a friend of ours (and her husband) Bob and Dawn. We had a marvelous time. The weather was spectacular and there was good wind except for about 1 hour. We were dead in the water long enough for lunch to be served and we then drifted out of the wind shadow and got back to sailing.

The first night out, we anchored off Isleboro and went over to Warren Island State Park where we had a lobster bake: lobster, corn, hardboiled eggs, hot dogs, hamburgers and many other snacky and deserty things. The food on the boat was Dawn's doing. The food was spectacular. We had fresh hot bread and rolls along with cinnamon rolls and one goodie after another. I have never had so much good food on one weekend. On saturday, we actually took water onto the deck the wind was so good. The only downside was that the bunks were under the deck and if you were on the outside next to the hull, you felt like you were in a MRI machine. The deck was close to the bed. I did get used to it but it was certainly disconcerting at first.

After having a great time there, the next weekend we dug out the tent which we haven't used since we bought the motorhome and went to visit Cheryl's neice's lot on a pond up near Mooshead. We had a nice time but did get rain the last night and had to break camp with everything wet. Other than that the weather was marvelous and we had these huge campfires using wood from the lot clearing. There were a couple of families of loons on the pond. They would swim by periodically with the babies riding on mama's back one time and in the water another. We listened to their wailing cries each night and early in the morning.

The next week Cheryl's cousin's husband died. He was the same age as me. That will really define your mortality. We wanted to go up for both the wake and the funeral so we packed up the camping gear once again and headed up to Mount Blue State Park. We got in but had to take a site for one night and then move to another for 2 more. We had planned to stay one more day but that would have meant moving once again as our site was reserved and although there were a lot of empty sites, ours was reserved and we would have had to move again. Once again we had great weather but had to break camp in the pouring rain. I guess that helped us make up our mind to leave.

That about covers the summer. It was a good summer but we had day after day of 90 plus temperatures and high humidity. Overall, it was a great summer but really to hot to do much.

Well, that is my review of the summer. We have been talking about what to do next summer. A return to Alaska would be nice but it may be too much money after this year. It may take a couple of years to get everything straightened out. We will most likely either go South to Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas and maybe even Georgia (to see our home campground) or head up to the Maritimes of Canada.

Well, got to go mow the lawn. The cooler weather and some rain have brought the lawn back to its prolific growth rate. We have had a nice summer visiting with my mother who rarely sees us in the summer.

This is the best time of the year. The warm days and the coolish nights. It got down into the low 40s last night. I went out and brought in my Christmas Cactus. Today I took out the A/C in the dining room and plotted out a plan to get more plants near the window there. My mother has a basil that someone gave her that is looking for a home. I will provide it. I want to get a small rosemary too although I have 2 pounds of rosemary that I bought so it should get nicely settled in before I need to use it.

I guess I miss writing on my trips as I have said goodbye a couple of times yet find something else to write about. I am really going this time. Bye

Clayton