The Road Trip with Some Twists….

On Thursday we hit the road early again.  Sometimes the time change works in our favor…Our clocks said 8:00 am and that was doable to me after our late night arrival.  But it was really 7:00 am!  We gained an hour just like that!  The plan for the day was to drive to Knoxville, TN by about lunch time.  We planned to meet up with Kenny and his girlfriend, Becky.We were going to do lunch together but they had eaten and we had snacked to death.  So we just hit a Starbucks and kept on moving.  We were all heading to Arkansas for a Godby get-together, with a stopover at the Bill Rice Ranch to see Wesley!

This is Wesley’s third summer as a teen counselor at the Ranch.  I really wanted to stop in for look at the place where he loves to go each summer.  He is thinking this is the direction where the Lord is leading him…working with youth and perhaps through camp ministry. 

We had supper together and then attended a service afterwards.  It was very refreshing to me after being on the road so long and church attendance was hit and miss.  The singing was great…BSF is the only other place I know that sings all the verses and up to tempo!  The speaker was Chris Miller and his challenge was on “A Passion for the Presence of God”.  Just about the entire audience was the summer staff and although it was a challenge to them to determine now, not to go through the summer without the presence of God, it was very encouraging to me also.  After the service Wes took us to Cowboy Town where he spends most of his time in the afternoons as a referee for the different games.  They were having a special on milkshakes, only a dollar and a lengthy wait in line!  :)

Wesley and Kenny, handsome young men…like their Dad…minus the young part :)

Wesley, Kenny and Becky..when Wes was at Ambassador he would drive an hour to help in a small church in SC.  Becky and another gal (Stephanie) went also.  Becky played the piano and has continued to do so this past year.

Had to do another picture since Becky was turned away in the last one!

Friday morning we left very early again..5:30 and without a time change to convince my brain otherwise!  We had a four hour drive to Memphis where we picked Andrea and Elaine up at the airport.  We flew them in for the Godby get- together as Wally’s folks had never met Elaine.  After collecting Andrea and Elaine, we regrouped with Kenny and Becky and had breakfast at Cracker Barrel.

This is what kept Wally motivated to keep on driving…seeing Elaine again.  She is now seven months old!

Elaine with a coffee creamer cup!

Leaving Maine

Our campsite in Bar Harbor

A couple of last looks at the lupine

This patch of lupine was surrounded by this yellow flower, very pretty!

On Wednesday we left Maine and travelled down to Stratton,Virginia.  The plan was to arrive by 8:30 pm.  It was a difficult day of travel.  Wally declared( rather frequently) all across Massachusetts that he would never drive to the Northeast states again!  The roads were pretty bad and we thought our camper would get jostled to pieces! Connecticut and Pennsylvania were not much better.  Really, what do they do with all that toll money?  It does not seem to go into maintaining the roads!  And then there are those irritating drivers who plunk themselves down in the left lane and putt along at their own rate of speed. Add to that the rain…we even changed one of the camper tires in the rain…Needless to say, it was midnight when we rolled into Stratton!

Lots of Lobster

Does this pick-up window look to you like an elegant dining place for lobster?  While it was not elegant, it was delicious!  After our bi-plane ride we went for one more meal of Maine lobster.  We were told this place, Beal’s Lobster Pier was great.   We picked our own lobster out and they weighed in at 2 lbs and 2 !/2 pounds!  When the order was ready, we were served our lobster rolled up in plastic wrap with little wooden poker forks.  The dining room was rows of picnic tables in a patio area, a sink and paper towel on the wall for washing!  It was very fun.  And let me give you a little lobster advice; a 2 pound lobster should be the starting weight if you buy one of these critters…there is so much more meat compared to the one pounders!

Our lunch all rolled out on the plastic…sorry the pic is a bit fuzzy!

Yum, Yum!

Too much lobster for Wally!

Some Interesting Lobster Trivia

• It takes the average lobster from five to seven years to reach legal size.  In that time it will shed its shell between 25 and 27 times.
• A female lobster will bear between 6,000 and 100,00 eggs. (Keep those lobsters coming!) Conservation laws in Maine prevent fisherman from keeping egg-bearing lobsters.
• Lobsters are naturally a greenish, yellow color.  Only cooked lobsters are red.  The most rare color is blue.  Only one in two million are blue.
• The largest lobster ever caught was pulled up off Nova Scotia and weighed just over 44 pounds.  It was believed to be more than 100 years old…lucky lobster!

This One was for Wally

So, we have seen Bar Harbor and Acadia by land, and by sea so why not by air!  Wally really wanted to take this biplane tour…totally out of my comfort zone.  But in a marriage one has to make little concessions for one another, right??  Even though I would not have chosen to do this, it was quite a perspective on the area.  And the pilot told Wally he could not do any loops or turns so that made me feel better!

Of course we needed a shot of the plane near a field of lupine!

The Miss Charlotte

One of the coves

Part of Bar Harbor

A sail boat…maybe that was what we looked like the day before!

Here are two lighthouses.  The top picture is the Petit Manan light house.  It is the second tallest lighthouse in Maine.  The bottom picture is the Egg Rock Lighthouse.

I thought the tide would surely cover the island over at high tide.  But Wally said the water was actually stable here at sea level.  Most of the lighthouses are on islands and only accessible by boat. The coast guard has sold or leased them to private owners as it has become so expensive for them to maintain.  Many are still are kept in working condition.

Acadia by Carriage

Tuesday was our most relaxed and enjoyable day in Bar Harbor.  We started with a great breakfast of blueberry pancakes…and I mean loaded with blueberries.  The blueberries grow wild all over this part of Maine.  We were told our campground  fills up in mid July with people there just to pick the blueberries.  In fact right on our campground are 15 acres of wild blueberries.

After breakfast we headed back to Arcadia park and took the bridges tour along Rockefeller’s carriage roads.  There were seventeen bridges Rockefeller built along the fifty miles of protected roads.  One bridge was a replica of a bridge in Central Park where JD had proposed to Abigail.  It was really quite pretty driving through the woods.

So Wally is laughing here because we were trying to get a picture next to the horses. Mac, the black Percheron, did not seem to like him.  He kept backing away from us!

The Gate House…and the gates.  Wally and I were the gate keepers for the day.  But back in “the day” a bell hung out by the gate and when a rider came by, they would ring the bell and the gate keeper came out to open and close the gates.  For that service, the gatekeeper got to live in this house!

      

This is Jordan Pond from the top.  Here is where the replica of the bridge from Central Park was located.  I just didn’t get a very good pic of it.

Sail Boating at Sunset

We went for a sailboat tour on a friendship sloop, the Alice E.  The friendship sloop is a certain type of sailboat.  this one was built in 1899 as a lobster boat.  I think I could learn to like sail boating.  Once we were out of the harbor it was quite peaceful.

Wally hoisting sail!

The Bear Lighthouse on Bear Island

The setting sun as we returned to harbor

Bar Harbor Maine

Our first full day in Bar harbor it was, yes, raining!  We thought it would be a good day for a drive through Arcadia National Park and some of the harbor villages.   The park was pretty. Quite a mix of the mountain scenery and the ocean lifestyle next to each other.  Arcadia was owned at one time by the Rockefeller’s.  They also had a house on one of the coves.  He donated the land as a national park upon his death.  Apparently he did not want the automobile to tear up the roads and vegetation, so it was stipulated in his will that fifty miles of the roads were to be travelled only by foot, horse or bicycle.  Also at his death, the house on the cove was to be burned.  A bit bazaar.  The Rockefeller family still summers in Bar harbor, they own an island!

On our drive we stopped at the Jordan Pond Restaurant for a popover…Kind of looks like a muffin but made from pastry and it is hollow inside.  You fill it with butter and jam!  Yummy with a mug of wicked wild blue blueberry coffee!  Jordan Pond was more like a lake and it was fresh water, not part of the harbor or bay.  There was another large lake on the other side of the ridge.  It supplies Bar Harbor with fresh water.

Seal Harbor

When I mentioned all the beautiful homes we had seen, we were told they were “cottages,”  mostly summer homes.

One of the local inhabitants!