Maine (Part Three) - Acadia National Park

Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher.
William Wordsworth

 

 

Ocean view near our campground

Sophie Cutie Pie - she's been such a joy to have with us this year!

Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do.... but how much love we put in that action.

Mother Teresa

The ocean from Cadillac Mountain.  This is the highest point on the Eastern Seaboard and the first place in America that sees the sun rise in the morning.  All my Colorado friends will find it amusing that the "mountain's" summit is 1530 ft.   Doesn't make it any less gorgeous though....

 

Dew drops on the pine trees

Fog can bring out unexpected beauty!

 

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
Albert Einstein 

 

 

We saw a whale for the first time! - by Isa

We went on a Whale Watch!  The boat was pretty big.  We sat up on the top in the second row.  Grandpa Don sat in the very front.  

A lady named Julie was telling us about the animals that we saw.  It was interesting.  She sat in the very front of the boat and looked around so she could tell us when she saw animals in the sea.

This is Gabi and me looking out for whales.

 

This is a seal.  Its head is above water because it needs air.  Seals lay on their backs when they are tired from swimming.  We saw Gray Seals and Harbor Seals.

We saw two kinds of whales.  The Minke whale is small, and mom didn't get a picture of it.  This is a picture of the other kind that we saw.  It is a Fin Whale.  Fin Whales are big!  It is the second biggest kind of whale.  The only whale that is bigger is the blue whale.  Fin whales don't jump out of the water, they only raise their backs out of the water.  The whales were graceful.  We saw them a lot.  There were two of them.   We also saw a Harbor Porpoise.  It did jump out of the water.  It was amazing!

This is one of the Fin Whales

 Gabi was eating crackers.  She was funny.

On the way home Gabi and I rested.  It was cold because we were far out in the ocean and we had lots of fog.  It was windy because the boat went so fast.  It went 35 miles per hour.  We put bags around our feet to keep them warm.  Everything else on our bodies was warm because we had big winter coats on. 

Luke and Grandpa Don watched for whales all the way home and rested a little on our journey. 





I liked the whale watch because we had never seen a whale in the wild before.  They are beautiful and intelligent creatures.

Maine! (Part one)

Canons from the 1800's - protectors of Frenchman's Bay

We just got back this evening (to Chris and Don's house in New Jersey) from a few days in one of my favorite places - Maine!  We visited  Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park.  






The local wildlife is much different than what we are accustomed to in Colorado!  Gabi spied this tiny baby crab in the rocks when we were walking around on the beach.  Most of the beaches in that area are rocky - and a good number are sheer cliffs!








One of our favorite things about vacations is sampling the local flavors of food.  Of course in Maine, that is LOBSTER! Here we are at Stewman's Lobster Pound - Luke has his pound of Steamers, Grandma Chris has her whole lobster, and the rest of us have lobster rolls. 






Well, all except Gabi, who discovered the hot dog on the menu.  To her great surprise and delight, traditional Maine hot dogs are pink!  Doesn't she look like its the best hot dog she has ever eaten?!?  She insisted I take a picture of her pink dog as she was eating it because she was so excited!






The next morning we took the opportunity to go exploring the tide pools and visiting the Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse - both of which are found in Acadia National Park.  I think this National Park has some of the most beautiful scenery in the country.  Its gorgeous.

The kids did the junior ranger program in Acadia too - and tide pooling was on the agenda.  We found rock weed, sea snails, periwinkles, and crabs.

They loved it! They were on the hunt for sea stars with no luck.  (Which was fine since they had just seen them at the DiVinci Science Center's touch table the week before!)

 I thought it was fascinating.

We also saw the Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse.  It was working that morning because of the fog.  Normally there is a clear view behind that lighthouse into the ocean.  Couldn't make much out that morning!   In all of our travels this is the only lighthouse still in operation that we visited.  (Which of course means we couldn't go inside because someone lives there.)

Despite the fog we piled up on the rocks to take a family picture.  A small tour group came along and we grabbed one of the ladies who took this gorgeous shot of us on the rocks just as the fog started to lift.  If you come to visit us in August, I am pretty sure this will be our new family picture - and I just might never take it down....

 Here is what the rocks look like without us sitting on them.  GORGEOUS!  To get to this spot there is a short hike next to the lighthouse that ends at these rocky cliffs.  I have been waiting for two years to get back to this spot!


Following our visits to the lighthouse and the tide pools we had another adventure in Maine, one which Isa is going to help me write about tomorrow.....

I wanna be a part of it...New York, New York!!!

 

Today we had the opportunity to spend the day in the city!

 Michael and I LOVE New York - each time we visit there is something new to do and see.  Today's "adventure" (as Gabi called it), was to take the train into NY, then take the subway to South Ferry and then take the Staten Island Ferry over to Staten Island.


The Ferry is free and gives riders a fabulous view of the Statue of Liberty.  Luke did research on New York for a cub scout belt loop earlier this spring and decided that of all the things we could do, the thing he wanted to do most was see "Lady Liberty."














The catch is that she just reopened yesterday after being cleaned up from Hurricane Sandy last fall, so getting to the actual statue was next to impossible.  (Ellis Island is still closed for the time being!)  We decided this was the next best thing - and it involved a boat, so that was great for the kids.

We took the Ferry over to Staten Island, which none of us had ever done before - and then ate NY Pizza at A&S Pizzeria in St. George.  It was fabulous.  The girls each had a bottle of orange Fanta - can you make out the orange mustaches?

We walked around New York a bit, and then headed back to Jersey.   The kids just about collapsed in DC from walking, so we took it easy on them today.

We got a nice picture of the new tower being constructed at the World Trade Center site.  (In the family shot up top, its the tall building on the left side of the skyline.)  I wanted to walk over to see the memorial, but it was super duper hot (almost 100 with WAY too much humidity), so we'll save that for the next time we go.

All in all, for a NYC visit, it was short and sweet - and left the kids wanting to come back again.

Crazy kids on the Staten Island Ferry

We leave for Maine on Monday!  The RV is fixed (just a couple wires were crossed - woo hoo!) and we are a bit more rested, so the vacation will continue.  Chris and Don will be meeting us in Bar Harbor, (we are staying in Acadia National Park which is 6 miles away).   I plan to eat a lot of lobster and we REALLY, REALLY hope that our whale watch will work out this year!! 

A note on Sophie - That crazy dog is still eating bugs, but has generally stayed away from the area where the hornets were.  Grandma Chris has already had pest control out here to completely eradicate that nightmare.   Sophie is doing fine.  The rest of us are neurotic. :)

Staying put

We left DC on Sunday and headed to Dover, Delaware to visit our good friends Didi and JP and their kids.  When we lived in Dover, they were our neighbors, and Didi and I were brand new moms together (our oldest kids are 6 months apart.)  Its so much fun to get together and watch our kids go crazy together!

They are waiting to close on their brand new house up in Middletown, Delaware, (happy closing tomorrow guys!) so we had the afternoon and early evening to catch up and enjoy some time together like in the "old days."

We have been having some issues with the RV - the generator started giving us trouble in DC - which means no air conditioning in the RV without being plugged in (though the car's a/c works fine), and the starter is doing very strange things.  For that reason, we left Dover in the early evening and headed to our home base in New Jersey with Grandma Chris and Grandpa Don.  They had taken Sophie home with them from Assateague, so we were eager to be reunited with her as well.

Plus we were very eager to have walls that weren't attached to wheels.  At Chris and Don's house we get the entire top floor to ourselves, the kids each have a bed, and they have a swimming pool and a basement game room with toys, air hockey, pool table, table tennis, and darts.  When the kids woke up the next morning, the change of square footage from the RV to the house was so dramatic they thought they were in a palace.

 Michael has been endeavoring to fix the RV for the last day or so, with some limited success.  He is going to replace two more parts and if that doesn't work he is going to actually call someone. 


In the meantime I spent most of yesterday doing laundry, shopping for groceries, and helping Chris get the house in order for the 7 of us.  This morning Sophie decided to throw us a curve ball and stirred up a hornets' nest.  LITERALLY.  We were getting ready to go swimming and I heard her screaming in the backyard, looked out the window and she was frantically rolling around in the grass trying to get the hornets off of her.  Having never dealt with a dog that has been stung I called the vet back home, got the dosage for Benadryl for the dog, and gave her some.  (She loved it - its the children's liquid bubble gum flavor!)  Once again I am thankful that I never leave on vacation without Benadryl!  Every single time we go somewhere I have to use it.  Its insane.

I have no idea how many times she was stung, but she seems to be okay - we are monitoring for swelling in her face and trying to keep a good eye on her.  Good grief.

We have had to change our plans for the 4th of July - turns out that Gabi isn't tall enough to go into the crown for the Statue of Liberty, so we are going to stay in NJ and have the 4th here and then head into Manhattan on Friday when we don't have to deal with such big crowds.   Hopefully the RV will get fixed in the next couple days, and next week we will be on the road to Maine!

Hooray for Staying PUT!!!!

DC

We had a really exciting, and really exhausting, visit to DC.  In two days we went to the Natural History Museum, the American History Museum, the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, WWII Memorial, Air and Space Museum (the other one in downtown DC), Arlington National Cemetery, The Women in Military Service Memorial, and the National Zoo - and managed to get to good vantage points to get pictures of the White House and the Capitol building.  I took hundreds of photos, these are just some of the highlights.

Still one of the most reverent places in DC - the Vietnam Memorial -it makes my heart ache.

Luke and Isa really wanted to meet President Obama - I tried to explain it doesn't work that way - but they didn't really understand why, so I ended up just telling them that the Obama Family was out of the country and left it at that.

The usual mass of humanity congregating on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  In all the times we've been here, this is always the busiest spot.

Had to throw in a picture of the Hope Diamond - after all it is just gorgeous.  Its housed at the Natural History Museum in the gem section.

 A small section of Arlington.  There really are no words. 

Luke and Kermit hanging out at the Museum of American History.

 After going to Kittyhawk, it was mandatory that we go see the actual Wright Brother's plane!  This is housed in the Air and Space Museum downtown.  It was fabulous to see those little minds putting it all together....

 Luke insisted that we get this picture - he learned about the three branches of government and wanted to get a picture with the capitol building.  We had lots of discussions about our national government that day.

The main thing I wanted to do in DC?  Take the kids to see a panda.  Everyone should be able to see a panda!  I just love them! 

The whole experience in DC was great.  We had great opportunities for yummy food up in Chinatown, lots of chances to ride the metro - which the kids LOVED, and so much entertainment my head is still spinning!

DC - Air and Space (Dulles)

We left the wild ponies behind and headed a few hours west to Washington DC. We stayed in Greenbelt Campground, which was only a mile bike ride from the College Park, University of Maryland Metro Station.  The location was awesome - the tick advisory, not so much. 

Before we even set up camp we made the trip to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum out at Dulles.  This was one of Michael's key requests for the entire vacation, so we wanted to make sure it happened first.   




We liked the Cessna - I had never been in one before so that was new for me.  Michael took ground school in high school, so he took the pictures.

Michael was in awe of the SR-71 Blackbird.  See the grin?  I couldn't believe the information that was tumbling out of his mouth as we walked around - he could have been a tour guide.  I had NO IDEA he knew that much about airplanes.  

Michael's favorite plane.  The F-14 Tomcat.  The man was in heaven.

 This was my favorite moment of the day - walking down the corridor into the hanger that houses the Space Shuttle Discovery.  I couldn't believe all the emotion I felt looking at something that for me symbolizes the creativity and determination of the American spirit.  It made me all misty-eyed.


I literally have hundreds of pictures of airplanes from that day - HUNDREDS - but I don't think there is any need to fill this blog with airplane pics.  It was awe inspiring and was my favorite museum of the whole Smithsonian experience.