Nancy leaves Portland, Maine for her family reunion

We've returned to the Portland, Maine area, because it has Maine's biggest airport - Portland International Jetport.  Nancy has a Meisenhelder family reunion in Pennsylvania scheduled for this coming week, and it's too far away to drive.  (I will have to stay behind on dog-sitting duty.)

Our campground is in the nearby town of Scarborough, and our site looks out on a pretty lake.

We took this opportunity to further explore the Portland area, which is known as a foodie destination.  The downtown, which adjoins the waterfront, is quite impressive, with lots of nice shops and restaurants.  We had lunch at an establishment called Duck Fat, whose chef is a former winner of the James Beard award (a very good thing).  The lines and wait times were long.

Their Belgian fries are twice cooked in duck fat.  That may not sound very appetizing, but they were possibly the best we've ever eaten.  The sandwiches we ordered were okay but not up to the standards of the fries.

We were so impressed by the pretty downtown that we dropped into a Remax real estate office to find out what kind of houses and condos were available.  The housing inventory is currently rather limited, but the prices seemed reasonable.  We particularly liked the section of Portland where grand homes overlook the bay.  We are fans of the city and have added it to our list of possibles.

Last evening we sat outside at our campground talking with the couple whose motorhome adjoins ours.  (Theirs is bigger.)  He is an ER physician and their home is on the southwest coast of Florida.  We were saddened to learn that those magnificent white sand beaches we were so impressed by a few months ago are now plagued by something called blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) bloom, which is toxic and ugly and makes those waters unusable for the next several months.  And this seems to be becoming an annual event.

As we sat there at dusk, we noticed some mosquitoes in the air, but the conversation was fun and we didn't retreat for a while.  Today we have a bunch of itchy mosquito bites, from feet to earlobes.  This is something that just didn't happen when we lived in the Santa Cruz area.  A black mark for the East Coast, a plus for the West Coast, but who's keeping score?

Nancy's reservation was with American Airlines, the only direct flight to Philadelphia, and was scheduled to leave at 1:46 PM today.  Around 3PM she received a text informing her that the flight had been canceled, and her new departure time was 7:24 PM.   While we were on the way to the airport, she got a text saying that there was a new departure time - 8:05 PM.  We started back to the campground to wait for a while, but soon she got a text telling her that the updated departure time was 7:30 PM.  I reversed course and dropped her off at the airport.  You can imagine our tearful farewell at the curb.

American Airlines must be the worst airline in America.  From the exorbitant ticket prices for that particular route to the nickel-and-diming at every opportunity to the reduction of seat room to a schedule which apparently can't be depended on, we're not going to be recommending that you fly those particular skies.

I just spoke with Nancy.  She told me that American Airlines, while she was at the airport, texted her several times to change the scheduled departure time.  Finally she was expecting to board at 7:40 and was sitting in a restaurant when she heard, "Last call for Wilson on AA flight 1936".  She ran to the gate and the flight took off at 7:09 PM.  Total confusion.  She arrived safely in Philly, and her brother Ren picked her up and took her to her hotel.

Nancy will be gone for three days.  I'll miss her desperately.  The dogs are distraught.

Back in the USA

It was time for us to leave Canada, partly because Nancy will be attending a Meisenhelder family reunion in Pennsylvania, and she wants to fly to there from an American airport.  (I will stay behind to take care of the dogs.)  Another factor was that most Canadian campgrounds have two problems that are irritating - terrible WiFi service and limited (30 amp) electrical power.  Our motorhome needs 50 amp electrical service in order to run both of our onboard air conditioners, and the weather throughout the northwest, both New England and the western provinces of Canada, had been unseasonably warm, making us a bit uncomfortable inside our motorhome with just one AC going.

But the main thing that made us anxious to return to our homeland was that most of the time we were disconnected from the internet.  And as pathetic and superficial as that sounds, it really was a major concern.  Our phone service, Verizon, doesn't work in Canada, and with the exception of our stay on Prince Edward Island, campground WiFi was spotty at best and non-existent at worst.

It's interesting to think back forty years or so ago when Nancy and I, young squirts then, had a dinky little motorhome and traveled around quite a bit without the benefit of a GPS.  The internet wasn't invented then, and we didn't communicate with email or texting (or tweeting).  Somehow we survived very nicely.  Now we depend on our electronics and feel deprived without them.

None of that diminishes our appreciation of Canada.  The country is gorgeous and the people are amazingly nice and likable.  In fact, we might consider moving there, but why would Canada welcome two old people who would inevitably use their medical services without providing any benefit to the country except for our sparkling personalities?

Our final Canadian RV park, on the way back, was in the town of St. Martins, New Brunswick.  St. Martins, on the Bay of Fundy, boasts the distinction of having the highest tides in the world.  In other words, the difference between high and low tides is the largest anywhere.  (Some port in Europe is in second place.)  Have a look at the photo below, which shows a cave near our campground at high tide.

I actually entered that cave.  Did I swim there?  No, I walked.  Here is a wider view of the same area at low tide, the cave hard to see because of the lighting.

It was necessary to ford several tiny streams running across the rocky shore in order to reach the cave, stepping on stones laid down by other adventurers.  My shoes took on a bit of water.  Nancy chickened out.  I entered the cave shown above (not much to see there).  I was able to scramble over a bunch of large rocks to reach around the corner and walk into a pretty nook containing other small caves.  Not bad for such an old dude.

Mainly in the 19th century St. Martins was an important shipbuilding center, with a number of shipyards, each owned by a local family.  Over 600 ships were built there during its heyday.  The last ship launched from there in 1919.  After that the town's economy collapsed and the population fell dramatically, to the cute little village it is today.  There is a small maritime museum in town.  The most interesting exhibit was a huge photo from early in the 20th century showing the ongoing construction of a large sailing ship.

Nancy was paranoid about the border crossing back into the US.  She worried about the wine and hard liquor we carried on board.  She threw out large quantities of milk, cheese, bread, and meat.  We stopped shortly before we approached the border so she could empty our garbage cans.

The border official at the booth took our passports and said, "Just the two of you?  I have to come inside to make sure there's nobody else on board."  Luckily, on this particular crossing we were not coyotes smuggling illegal aliens across the border.

The official boarded our motorhome, leaving the door open.  Tammy Faye made a break for it.  The guy went down to the driveway and picked her up, returning her to our bosoms.  He had a quick look around to make sure that there wasn't a family hiding in the bathroom.  He didn't open the refrigerator, and the only question he asked was, "Do you have any firearms?"  He left, returned our passports, and waved us on our way.  What a relief!  And suddenly the internet was available again.

Prince Edward Island

Prince Edward Island is to the north of Nova Scotia and connected to it by a long bridge.  As soon as we arrived on the island we were struck by how prosperous it looked, probably because all the lawns were mowed and everything looked well tended.  The countryside featured rolling hills, with lots of evergreen trees and occasional psychedelic splashes of intensely yellow mustard fields.  Our campground is a few miles from Charlottetown, the capital and largest city on PEI (Prince Edward Island).

The island is known for its commercial farming of mussels, and "PEI mussels" are sold more than any other all over North America.  They also produce a lot of oysters and lobster.

We drove to the fishing village of North Rustico for lunch at the Blue Mussel Cafe, which had gotten great reviews.

We ordered a lobster dip course, followed by bowls of pink mussels that were incredibly tender and tasty and well worth the trip.  The interior of the shells were, as advertised, blue in color, due to the particular waters in the area.

Down the street from the cafe is a well-known seafood market, where we picked up twenty-five oysters in their shells for later preparation and consumption at our campground.

Oysters aren't easy to open.  I do have an oyster shucker but am lacking in experience.  I used a kitchen towel to hold each of those things in my left hand as protection against injury while trying to wedge the tip of the shucker into the hinge end.  Those babies were stubborn.  Their muscles were stronger than mine but mine were bigger and eventually I managed to wedge them open and detach the oysters from the shell halves.  I opened half and left half closed.

First, I swallowed a couple of them raw, with their liquor, as oyster cognoscenti do.  The taste was briny and distinctive and was supplemented with a traditional Louisiana hot sauce concoction.  Nancy had no interest in that approach.

Next, I placed the dozen unopened oysters directly on the grill and cooked them for ten minutes or so, at which point most of them spontaneously opened.  We ate those with a couple of sauces and noticed an interesting smoky flavor imparted by the grilling.

Finally, I coated with Panko breadcrumbs the remaining oysters that had been detached from their shells and pan fried them.  Crispy exteriors and tender, delicious interiors.

My favorites were the fried oysters, I think Nancy preferred the grilled oysters, but all three preparations were delicious and fun.

Prince Edward Island has an interesting history.  One day we drove way over to the town of Miscouche, near the northern end of the island, to tour the Acadian Museum there.  Originally "Acadia" was a substantial French colony which comprised what is now part of Quebec, part of Maine, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island.  During the 17th and 18th centuries France and England took turns taking military control of all or part of that area.  Whenever England was in charge, the Redcoats had the habit of kicking the French settlers out, as depicted in this painting in the museum.

Many of the French settlers boarded ships and returned to France.  Some hunkered down in remote parts of Acadia, including Prince Edward Island.  Eventually, when control of the area shifted, some of those families resettled in Acadia.  And some of them traveled to southern Louisiana, which was French territory at that time, and were the progenitors of the Cajun population that has given that area such an interesting flavor.  You may know that the word "Cajun" is a bastardization of the word "Acadia".  (I'm from northern Louisiana and went to medical school in New Orleans, so this is of personal interest to me.)

In the museum we listened to a video of a local band playing traditional Acadian music.  The musicians were all playing fiddles, and what they played would fit right in with what you can hear today from zydeco music in Louisiana Cajun country (except without accordions and washboards).

In checking out the restaurants on the island, I noticed that the Culinary Institute of Canada has its campus in Charlottetown, and there is a restaurant associated with it.  We made reservations for Tuesday night.

It's a beautiful facility, right on the waterfront.  The chefs are fully on display, so you can watch and listen as instructors guide the students.

The food was artfully plated and delicious.  The servers were cordial.  We were happy campers (literally).  A wonderful evening.  I will admit that it was a bit long between courses - but that wasn't a problem for us.  We're on vacation.

The city of Charlottetown has lots of personality.  A cool downtown, with plenty of sidewalk restaurants.

The classic 1908 children's novel Anne of Green Gables was set on Prince Edward Island.  That story has been converted into Anne of Green Gables: The Musical and was playing at the Confederation Theatre of the Arts in downtown Charlottetown.  I wanted to see it, as an homage to our visit here, but Nancy voted to go instead to Jesus Christ Superstar,  which was playing at the same theater.

Guess what: We saw Jesus Christ Superstar.

Nancy has attended stage productions of that musical twice and has viewed it on television many times.  She's a fan.  All the songs are familiar to both of us.  In this one Judas was impressive, Jesus was a bit wimpy and irritating, the pit orchestra was fabulous, and it was a great evening at a beautiful theater.

We loved Prince Edward Island, and Charlottetown would be a fun place to live.  Wrong country, though.

Gay Pride

Truro, Nova Scotia, population 12,000, not far from our campground, has a nice Saturday Farmers' Market.

Lots of locally-grown produce there, of course.  Nova Scotia is much further north than California, with a shorter but more intense growing season, so some varieties of fruits and vegetables look and taste different from what we're used to.  In particular, their strawberries are wonderful.  We've seen California strawberries (Driscoll and other brands) in grocery stores in every state we've visited, and mostly those are not impressive strawberries - beautiful bright red exteriors but less than exciting taste.  Obviously the variety they use has been bred to look good and last long enough to withstand long-distance shipping rather than making taste their priority.  California is capable of growing great fruit but the commercial product ain't that.

The Canadian strawberry - both in grocery stores and farmers' markets - looks less appetizing - smaller fruit and dark red in color - but it is red all the way through and has intense strawberry taste.  That's the one you want to eat.  Their local tomatoes are excellent, too.

As with farmers' markets everywhere, this one also had food stalls and vendors of all sorts of other products.

As we walked along downtown looking for a lunch spot, Nancy noticed the colors of the rainbow displayed in many of the stores.  She very perceptively asked the waitress at the restaurant we selected if that meant that there was to be a gay pride parade, and it turned out that one was scheduled that very day.

We joined the enthusiastic crowds lining the parade route.

There were floats, including a couple by local churches, and marchers and music.  Not every participant was a hardbody.

This was no San Francisco pride parade.  It was surprisingly wholesome and G-rated, with no nudity and no raunchiness.  And of course much smaller.  I saw only two drag queens.

There were marchers of all ages and persuasions.
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It was quite remarkable to witness what appeared to be an entire town turning out for an only slightly weird celebration of these alternative lifestyles.  You sure wouldn't expect to see that in small-town America.

Nova Scotia, in our brief time there, turned out to be pretty interesting.

New Brunswick

From St-Andrews-By-The-Sea we moved further up the Canadian coast to Hillsborough, New Brunswick.  Once again, it was a very pretty campsite, our front windshield looking out onto a pond.

Hillsborough didn't have a lot going on.  The primary excitement during our stay was a visit to a railroad museum.  There were several old railway cars and an engine from the days when those tracks were used for excursion trips outside Hillsborough.

That facility was not well-attended, and it was difficult pulling ourselves away from an older gentleman who appeared to be the manager of the museum and wanted to let us know ALL about it..

We drove to the nearest city, Moncton, partly because Costco has a store there.  It had the look of a stateside Costco, but Nancy was frustrated because many of her favorite items in the Santa Cruz store were not available in that one.

We did have a nice lunch at a French restaurant in Moncton.  New Brunswick borders the province of Quebec, and even though everyone speaks English here, all the signs are bilingual (English and French).

In Canada we have to deal with some changes in standards and measures.  Instead of US dollars, we have Canadian dollars, each of which is worth about 75 US cents.  Instead of miles of travel distance, we have kilometers, each of which equals around six-tenths of a mile.  Instead of gallons of gasoline (and other liquids), we have liters, each of which equals just over a quarter of a gallon.

We filled up our motorhome today with unleaded regular gas at C$1.26/liter (US$3.78/gallon) . It took 209.3 liters (54.3 gallons) and it cost us 290 Canadian dollars (205 US dollars).  We get a bit over six miles per gallon, so the higher prices north of the border hurt.  (This is not a Prius we're driving.)

We have now crossed into the province of Nova Scotia (New Scotland), which looks to me like the big sky country of Montana, with beautiful cloud formations above horizon-wide forested vistas.  Our campsite is in the town of Hilden and presents the same communication difficulties as Hillsborough did.  That is, internet access is spotty at best.  Our phone service is with Verizon, and we are able to make calls in Canada, but no longer can we raise the internet on our phones and certainly can't use them as hot spots for our computer.  Both of our last two campgrounds did provide wifi to its customers - but much of the time that wifi was and is dead in the water.

We are still able to receive satellite television signals and thus can watch TV.  But we'll have to wait until we go south of the border for streaming video.

I will continue trying to post updates to the blog.  Admittedly, our adventures in Canada so far have been few and seldom, but I'll be using poor internet access as my primary excuse for the slow posting schedule.  And in fact it is awfully difficult to transfer photos from my phone to our computer and to publish new chapters under these circumstances.

A while back, when Nancy searched TripAdvisor for things to do in Hilden, where we are now, it came up totally blank - a bad sign.  But it's possible that we'll find hidden treasures here.  Things should pick up when we drive over a bridge onto Prince Edward Island and settle down in a campground outside Charlottetown, which is a fair-sized city..

O Canada

What do we think about Maine?  We love it!  It's quite a beautiful state, with mile after mile of rocky coastline.  There are lots of charming villages and magnificent views.  The people we've met are great, for the most part.  However, there is the issue of those harsh winters which, while undoubtedly scenic, might be a deal-killer for us - not because of the cold weather, which we can tolerate better than most people our age, but because many of the restaurants and stores there shut down for the winter season.  That would leave us feeling isolated for months at a time, if Maine was our year-round home.

And we never found that perfect combination we seek - a university town with a rich restaurant scene and pretty neighborhoods with services nearby.  However, our explorations are incomplete.  We have been impressed with pretty much all of the New England states and certainly won't rule out a future house-hunting trip there.

After a last day with our fabulous hosts Pat and Liz O'Grady - a delicious lobster-in-the-shell dinner at their home and another wonderful classical music concert at Kneisel Hall in Blue Hill - we began preparing ourselves for a voyage into the wilds of Canada.

At the border crossing we knew we would need our passports and evidence that our dogs were up on their shots, but then I began wondering if we would also need evidence of insurance coverage for the motorhome.  I called our insurance carrier, and the lady confirmed that we were covered for Canada, but that the Canadian border officials usually required an official card, prepared by the carrier, certifying coverage.  I tried to have that card delivered overnight to our campground.  However, the office in Ohio closed before FedEx could get there.  And this was Friday afternoon.

About this time we did further investigation and learned that visitors into Canada are only allowed to bring in two bottles of wine each, with duty to be paid on wine that exceeds that limit.  Unfortunately, we have about 25 bottles, stored under our bed, many of which we brought from California and haven't consumed yet.  It was at this point that we realized just how pathetic our planning process has been.  Flying by the seat of one's pants has its advantages, but there will be times when lack of preparation will bite us.

Nancy read on the internet that we were not allowed to bring in to Canada eggs, milk, butter, uncooked meat, and cheese.  She tossed all of that stuff we had onboard into the trash.  On the positive side, we now had more refrigerator space.

She also wanted to toss the small quantity of marijuana gifted us by the young woman from Humboldt County a couple of months ago, since Canada, in spite of legalizing weed recently, does not allow importing it.  I overruled her and hid it as a keepsake.

Should we wait until Tuesday, when we would be able to receive a FedEx delivery of the insurance certification card?  What should we do about the wine - lie about it at the border and face jail time?  Leave it with the O'Gradys and pick it up on return?  Find a storage facility to hold it?  Pay that exorbitant duty?  Invite our fellow RV'ers over and drink it all before we left?

Our decision was to go boldly forward to the border crossing, and to tell the truth to the Canadian gatekeeper..  Off we went on Saturday.

As we approached the border, the traffic was extremely light.  We had anticipated endless lines of automobiles, as is the case on the West Coast.  We could see that there was some backup of cars coming into the US, as presumably the officials were diligently protecting Americans from killer Canucks.

But when we reached the Canadian border, we drove without waiting to an open Canadian customs window.  A young man took our passports.  He didn't ask for our dogs' rabies certificates, and he didn't ask us for proof of insurance coverage, and he didn't ask about food items on board.  He did ask if we had any firearms, weapons, or mace - which we didn't.  He asked if we had any wine or spirits.  I said, "Yes.  Unfortunately, we have about twenty-five bottles of wine, and three or four bottles of hard liquor."

He shook his head sadly and we prepared ourselves for the inevitable full inspection of our motorhome, a lengthy delay, and hundreds of dollars in duties.   He asked how long we would be in Canada - 10-14 days - and whether we would be visiting anyone - no.  Finally he smiled, handed our passports back, winked, and said, "Don't tell anyone."

Well, now I've told you, the readers of this blog, and I'm counting on you to keep our secret, so that fine young border guard won't lose his job.

And what a fine RV park - Kiwannis Oceanside Campground - we pulled into upon crossing into Canada!  It is in the province of New Brunswick, on the very tip of a peninsula and ringed on three sides by magnificent Passamaquoddy Bay.

The town, within walking distance, is St-Andrews-by-the-Sea, an idyllic little village.

Our first chore after setting up our motorhome was going into the local grocery and buying replacements for those food items that Nancy, in an overabundance of caution, had thrown away before we crossed the border.

The Great Escape

I was unaware that you could hear steel drum band music outside the Caribbean, where those instruments were invented many years ago in Trinidad and Tobago.  I also didn't know that white people could or wanted to play them.  Well, the O'Gradys took us to a steel drum band concert by the Flash in the Pans Community Steel Band in Blue Hill, a town on the peninsula where they live.

I believe that the New England steel band movement was started in Blue Hill over forty years ago and spread like wildfire over the northeastern states (a slight exaggeration).  The instruments used are oil drums whose top surfaces have been hammered to create dimples tuned to specific notes.

Local folks study to learn how to play those things using mallets or drumsticks, and the band we heard was quite large, putting out music that was exciting, rhythmic, and full bodied.  It was hard to sit still, and lots of people were moving to the beat.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get Nancy, Pat, or Liz to dance with me.

We thought it would be interesting for our dogs Sophia and Tammy Faye to meet and interact with the O'Gradys' Finn.  With our girls weighing in at 11 and 15 pounds, and Finn hitting the scale at almost 200, I was curious whether Tammy Faye and Sophia would recognize Finn as being of the same species.  Certainly the variation of dog breeds is a tribute to the power of evolution.

We took our dogs over to the O'Gradys' house and introduced them.  At first Finn, a gentle giant if ever there was one, was super curious and lumbered after them, sniffing and nudging, and our little ones fled, mostly.  But soon everybody got comfortable and essentially ignored each other.

Every Tuesday afternoon Pat and Liz drive to Castine, another coastal town in the area, to meet with friends and listen to jazz at the Pentagoet Inn.  On this occasion we were invited to join them, and the plan was to leave the three dogs at home alone.  A door was left open to the outside so they could do their business in a fenced-in yard, shown above.

Castine is supposedly one of the oldest towns in Maine, and it has quite a history.  It's full of charming and impressive homes, many on the bay.  A physician we know from Santa Cruz owns a large house there, currently up for sale, and Pat was hoping that we would fall in love with it and the town and move there.  We wandered the streets of Castine and learned by looking in realtors' windows that local home prices are not unreasonable.

We joined a couple, Hal and Lee, on the porch of the Pentagoet Inn, at the corner table reserved for their circle of friends who meet every Tuesday, when a local jazz trio plays during the summer.  We learned that Lee is the author of quite a few books and a university professor, and Hal is a journalist - once an editor at Time Magazine - and currently a self-described leftist political writer.  Fascinating people, fun to talk with.

We had ordered drinks and dinner and were talking and listening to the wonderful jazz trio, who were also on the porch, when I looked over and saw the bass player, an older gentleman, do a face plant on the deck in front of him.  "Is there a doctor in the house?"  Pat and I went over, and Pat, a recently retired cardiologist, knelt beside him, did a cursory exam and talked with the patient, who was conscious and said that he had felt overheated (and it was an unseasonably hot afternoon) before falling.  He complained of some temporary chest pressure, but with time he looked and felt better.  A local ambulance arrived, and the attendants took an EKG, which Pat read as normal.  The patient was taken to a local hospital ER to be checked out.  Pat felt it was probably just a fainting spell.  Deeply grateful, the inn's owner said that Pat would get free drinks there for life.

Before long the musicians - now a duo - began playing again.  The food was outstanding, Nancy loved her cocktail, the conversation was stimulating, the jazz was excellent, and it was a memorable experience.  If we lived anywhere close by, Nancy and I would certainly make a Tuesday habit of joining the O'Gradys and their friends there.  Incidentally, when the bills arrived, Pat had been charged for his drinks, in full.

Finally we headed back to the O'Gradys' home to pick up Tammy Faye and Sophia.  About halfway there, Nancy's phone rang.  It was a young woman who said that they were neighbors of Pat and Liz who were driving along when they saw ahead of them, in the middle of the road, a mostly white dog, unattended.  They picked her up, were able to read three phone numbers on her collar tags, and had been calling for some time.  Castine is in a Verizon dead zone, so this was the first attempt that got through, other than one to our friend Linda in Scotts Valley, California, who had declined to fly out.

We arranged to meet them on the road, and indeed it was our Sophia, no worse for wear, who was handed over to us.  We'll be forever grateful to that wonderful young woman and her dad for saving our dear girl.

Incredibly, we later learned that another neighbor had also - earlier - found Sophia on the road.  She had then carried her over to the fenced-in area adjacent to the O'Gradys' home and saw evidence that Sophia had dug her way out, under the fence.  Tammy Faye was still there, as was Finn, so she knew that this was where Sophia was supposed to be.  She returned Sophia to the yard and placed some big rocks to block her escape.  Those measures, obviously, proved inadequate.

Luckily, Sophia is largely a white dog and therefore visible at night in automobile headlights.  It doesn't bear thinking of what might have happened if she were a black dog and hard to see.  Or if she had wandered off down the road, in which case Nancy and I would have been roaming the neighborhood all night, shining flashlights and calling out to her.

Sophia is a bit neurotic and subject to separation anxiety.  Specifically, she sometimes becomes frantic if Nancy isn't around.  In an unfamiliar home, especially with the noise of intermittent fireworks (this was the night before July 4th), and missing her mom, she made her great escape - twice! - by tunneling to freedom.  Resourceful.  Terrifying.  It certainly would have ruined our trip if anything had happened to either of our beloved animals.

On the fourth of July it was our turn to host, at our RV park.  This happened to be the apex of the severe heat wave that was hitting the East Coast, and the temperature was well into the nineties.  Pat and Liz brought Finn.  That great beast, with his heavy coat, tends to get overheated, so we spent most of the visit inside our air-conditioned motorhome.  We served traditonal hot dogs and hamburgers and Pat made Margaritas.  The animals, including our little escape artist, got along just fine.

We walked around the campground, and Finn, as usual, was the center of attention.  Children, especially, were fascinated by him.

Here is the gang at the campground, making our rounds.  That's the little troublemaker at far left.

The O'Gradys

Friends from Santa Cruz Pat and Liz O'Grady have a second home in Maine on one of the peninsulas jutting out into the Atlantic that make northern Maine so ruggedly beautiful, and they invited us to join them.  From our campground in Ellsworth, Maine we drove to their place, the roads long and smooth and almost devoid of traffic and signs of civilization.  They seem so isolated that friends have accused them of being in the witness protection program.

But what a nice house, and what a setting!  Their glassed-in porch looks west over a beautiful bay just off their backyard.  When conditions are right they experience some of the most intense and gorgeous sunsets you'll ever see.  Here's one they photographed a few days before our visit.

For dinner they served one-and-three-quarter-pound lobsters.  Great fun breaking into those beasts and teasing the delicious meat out.  Our lobster-eating skills are slowly improving.

It might be of interest that Pat and Liz have a pet black bear.  They have named their bear Finn.  Finn weighs about 180 pounds.

Nancy has just informed me that I was mistaken - that Finn is actually a very large Newfoundland dog.  I apologize for the confusion.

The O'Gradys spend most summers in Maine and the remainder of the year in Santa Cruz.  Pat is a private pilot and they fly in their own plane between the two homes when they change location.  It's a four-seater and Finn occupies the rear seats.  Finn and the other O'Gradys reportedly handle long-distance flying very comfortably.

Luckily, Finn is one of the sweetest animals you'll ever find and is always the center of attention when they take him out on the leash.  Because of his resemblance to a bear, he wears a reflective orange coat during hunting season.  I'll have better pictures of him in the days to come.

With the O'Gradys we attended an exciting chamber music concert at Kneisel Hall in Blue Hill, Maine, featuring a nationally known clarinetist, Alan Kay, and an outstanding string quartet.  Beautiful tonal colors, and the precision of the musicians on the complicated scores was remarkable.  The area does feature quite a lot of music during the summer months, but the entertainment scene is understandably rather dead during the harsh winters here.

We also drove over a bridge to Bar Harbor, a lovely town on nearby Mount Desert Island.  It's become a cruise ship destination, so it's a bit crowded downtown, but we like it a lot.  We intend to revisit Bar Harbor and find out about real estate opportunities there.