A lot has happened

A lot has happened over the past five or so days.

Old age set in last Tuesday. I knew it was creeping up on me. There are telltale signs you know! At first you have a few pains that you really notice. Pretty soon you have lots of pains. Ankles, knees, hips, back, neck, shoulder, hands and fingers start aching. This is good because you can’t focus on any single pain. They all become background noise

For awhile you kid yourself that your body is going south but you are still sharp as a tack mentally, where it counts. You may not remember the fellow whose car you hit yesterday but your memories of your third grade teacher are as clear as can be. So all is OK until something happens that bursts that bubble.

My bubble was burst on Tuesday when Uncle Steve at the RV Park came by about 3 PM to ask when we were leaving. “Tomorrow,” I said. “You are paid up through today and we have the space reserved by another party”, he said. “Shucks”  (or something like that), I said, “Our week isn’t up until tomorrow.” But it was up. I lost track of the days. The bulb is dimming.

We were out of there in just fifteen minutes leaving only the indoor/outdoor thermometer sensor behind. I remembered to put the slide in. Sharp as a tack!!

Our stay in bar Harbor was all it could be. We did lots of birding. We finally ate lobster. We toured several wildlife areas. We met lots of nice folks.

Brenda enjoying a day at sea.

I thought we would turn west from Bar Harbor but a bird called us further north and east.

Brenda wants to see a Woodcock. This is a sandpiper whose ancestor got confused, wondered into the woods, and stayed there. It is almost nocturnal. It calls during mating season at dusk and dawn. It forages in dense undergrowth for bugs.

This search took us up to Moosehorn Wildlife Refuge where the blackflies and mosquitos are the dominant species. There we were able to go out one night with the reserve field biologists who mist netting the displaying Woodcock. At least they tried to mist net them. Oh, the joy of stumbling through marshy land covered with thick underbrush in the pitch dark of night! I only brought back one tick and about a zillion mosquito/blackfly bites.

Since we were close we drove out to the eastern most point in the United States and crossed into Canada to see the Roosevelt summer “cottage there”.

Sign at Quoddy Point.

Lighthouse at Quoddy Point.

Roosevelt 32 room summer cottage. 

Quoddy Point

Wild blueberries in Maine.

 There are a few things that I noticed about Maine. All the people are very friendly. All the people talk funny. There are few cranberries. There are lots of blueberries.

The roads are bad.  

The past two days we have driven from Maine to New York.

 New Hampshire and Vermont are scenic wonders.

 

Pastoral scene on drive through New Hampshire.

Today we are heading for Ithaca, New York, to visit Cornell and see Sapsucker Woods.