Southwest Harbor and Acadia Park Bound

A Fall Dip In Thompson Lake

Hot Tubbing With Ellery

Crazy Granny

We are both up early, at 6:00 because we are driving three and a half hours this morning to Acadia National Park, where we plan on staying for three or for days, depending on the weather.  Rain is coming sometime tommorow, so we hope to make the best of this afternoon and tomorrow morning and afternoon if we can.  We will just have to see what nature brings.  We are staying at a Bed and Breakfast in Southwest Harbor, but we cannot check in till 3:00, so we will get a hike in before checking in.

Walking With the Labs

My Buddy, Trout

Yesterday was a busy day with lots of company, friends of both the Trouts and ours from our days teaching together at Western Reserve Academy.  First of all, however, we spent the morning with the grandkids, what else do you do on a Sunday morning.  They were in rare form, wanting Trout to do this or Evie to do that.  So we all decided to walk the roads down here, lovely because they are wooded and there's almost no traffic.  We walked for over an hour, looking at the various houses, from modest cottages to huge estates with muiltiple buildings.  Thompson Lake is obviously very popular though its nowhere near as crowded with homes as Chautauqua.  Most are set back so they are hard to see.  We took the dogs with us, and they loved just running wild, scampering ahead and into the woods, looking anything of interest.  It is obviously a great place for dogs and everyone up here has at least one if not two.

Around 2:00, Ellery wanted to jump in the hot tub before going home to Portland.  So Ron, Ellery and Evie put on their suits and went outside and jumped in the tub.  They relaxed and played games with Ellery until Evie got the great idea of swimming in the frigid lake.  I couldn't resist jumping in either, so I quickly put on my suit and all of us went for a mighty quick dip in the lake, bone chilling cold I might add.  We then scurried up the yard, jumped in the hot tub and stayed in it until we warmed up and Ellery had to go.  We got dressed and said a sad goodbye to the Jenkinson's, who unlike the four of us, have to work tomorrow.  What's that.

Nora and Cliff, Friends From Boston

Around 3:30, Cliff and Nora Webster stopped by, having spent the weekend at Bowdoin College homecoming and their house on the tip of the Georgetown, Maine peninsula.  Cliff taught at Reserve and he and Nora spent a weekend at Chautauqua back in the early 1980's.  They were the two who got the Armontrouts interested in Maine and Ron helped Cliff build his post and beam house in 1977 and 1978, a long time ago.  Both Cliff and Nora and the Trouts have remained good friends and for the past twenty or thirty years, they have a Thanksgiving lobster bake on their beach.  We caught up on their kids and since they are going to Istanbul in a month, we talked about where they should stay, what they should do in their four days there before going to visit their daughter in Jordan.  They stayed about an hour before driving home to Boston.

Hobart and Linda,  Neighbors and Colleagues from Reserve

We relaxed for an hour, though Evie and Vickie put the finishing touches on the pastitisio from Ina Garten of course.  At 6:00, Hobart and Linda arrived, good friends of the Trouts as well as us because Hobart taught at Reserve for a number of years in the 1980's before moving on to Groton School and now Exeter, a couple hour drive from their house on Thompson Lake.  We have had dinner with them both times we were up, two and three years ago, so it was fun to see them again.  Exeter had Parent's Weekend so they have Monday off so they decided to drive up.  We had a great meal, swapped boarding school and lakefront ownership stories, till about 9:00 when they went home, about a quarter of a mile away on the lake.  They are great people, fun to talk with, and we love getting to see them each time we visit.  All of our histories go back thirty plus years.

We were all exhausted from the weekend of fun, grandchildren, company, food and wine, so we went to bed early, around 10:00, to get ready for our drive north.  A great weekend with the Trouts and Family and Friends!

BFF