What I Did on My Summer Vacation by Michelle E. Age...nevermind. :)

[tree_talking]

The trip to Maine began early in the morning of the 11th. We loaded up the old mini-van, and headed out on the road. The van began to not want to shift up into third, so we ended up coming home and loading up the old Chevy Cavalier with our stuff (thank goodness it all fit!) and finally headed out at 10AM. It turned out to be a great move, considering that the Chevy gets MUCH better gas mileage.

Our trip was smooth, even though Liam complained frequently that the ride was "too long". He's not a big fan of long car trips. Luckily, my mother in law gave us a portable DVD player and he coped with the nearly 8 hour car ride very well!

Once we got to our little cottage:

(ours is in the back row of weeny cottages) we got settled in and Liam looked out towards the beach nearing sunset:



and informed me that "it looks like Trix Rasperry Rainbow yogurt" (referring to the sky) and the funny part was he was right!

The cottage was very small, basically one room with a bed, a fold-away cot, and a small kitchen area, but it was really just right for us for a week. We were able to make breakfasts and lunches at the cabin, which was a great help financially.

I can't give you a blow-by-blow accounting of our trip, but let me tell you it was the best vacation we've ever taken as a family. We had so much time to decompress and Liam was so good at dealing with all the different things thrown at him. So I'll give you pictures and what's going on in them.


This is the beach of our little cabin thingie on the ocean. It was so nice to just come down to the shore and sit. It was so lovely and quiet.


This is Frenchman's Bay, showing all the smaller islands. They are very beautiful and there is a small fishing community of 75 year round residents on one of them, in the town of Isleboro, Maine. This picture was taken on the Loop Road in Acadia National Park, Maine--if you haven't ever been there, it's a wonderful trip to take, and I highly recommend it.

My mother's ashes are scattered in Frenchman's Bay. On the first morning, I went to the shore, picked up a sea-washed smooth stone, sat in the morning silence alone, and cried for the first time in years about my mother. Some of my tears splashed on the stone--a little more salt can't hurt it, after all. I still have the stone in my bag.

Here is another view of Frenchman's Bay, again, taken from the Loop Road:


The most AMAZING picture taken by my husband. This is Jordan Pond in Acadia National Park, again taken from the Loop Road.

The morning fog coming off of the islands. I always thought it looked like snowdrifts. Beautiful.

We have a few more pictures in this genre, as well as actual pictures of people, but I'm going to put that in a later post. I can't express and I don't think the camera can capture some of the gorgeous places just contained in a small little route called "the Park Loop Road". We drove through on a overcast day and just looked, not taking pictures, at the mist coming off of the pine trees and the rugged cliffs overlooking the ocean. I can't help thinking that the mist off of the pine trees must be what you see right before you cross over into Faerie.

Every time I come to this little island, it's like I'm coming home. And I'll write more about that later, in my next post.

Comments

[lostinapapercup.livejournal.com]

Those are great pictures! The last one in particular is just gorgeous.

I'm so glad you had a good time.