Maine 07/2008 Peter and Marnie's Island

Not far from North Haven, we arrive at Marnie and Peter's place, a classic Maine cottage.

Marnie and Jeannie are waiting for us on the dock.

We gather in the living room of Marnie's family cottage.

Peter and Kees thinking deep thoughts.

The Freeland Clan enjoying Marnie's hospitality.

Some bedrooms in the cottage.

More bedrooms, the place can really sleep a lot of folks.

I think this was one of the servants rooms back when folk had servants.

Our tour of the cottage complete, we head out back to check out the boat house.

Peter is reaching over some of the boats in the boat house to show us a hidden picture. Although I have a photo of what Peter is about to uncover, I will not post it here, since I have a G audience, but that should give you a clue as to what it was. Just suffice it to say that Jason is paying close attention.

Here is the ramp from the boat house out to the ocean. The tide is out a little bit.

This is the boat house from the water.

Here are some of the out buildings on the property.

This is the tool shack or equipment/repair building, I can't really remember for sure.

I think this was an art studio at one time. Now, it's a nice cabin.

Next, we load up in the boat and head over to Peter and Marnie's private island, which is located just across from the island with Marnie's family's cottage.

We get the boat secured and begin our tour of the island.

Here we are heading up to Peter and Marnie's house.

We get our suits on and head down to the water. It's really cooold.

After our dip, we take a walking tour of the island.

This is Peter's Place of Deep Thoughts.

Catherine and Peter are leaving the house and are heading back to the boat.

We load up and Marnie is taking us back to the big island and supper.

On the way, we pass the cabin

and the big house.

We make our way back to the big island, where our sail boat is anchored (actually, we are tied up to a buoy here, not anchored - did I mention that the winless (wench) did not work very well.

After Marnie's great meal, us guys are just trying to decide what to do next.

As evening wears on, we end a neat day with Peter and Marnie, enjoying a little bit of southern hospitality way up in Maine and head back to the boat, taking in a beautiful sunset.

Maine 07/2008 Day 2

We overnighted on Swans Island. After coffee and breakfast, we head out, coming across this lobster man.

This is a typical waterfront scene. It's amazing how much it looks like the Puget Sound from last year's trip.

There was no wind, so we kept the sails down and had to motor.

Next stop - North Haven

I think this is called the Boat House.

We stop by J. O. Brown's Boat Yard.

It's a really neat old place. We would be back, not as tourists, but as customers.

Going in the shop is like stepping back in time.

We take lunch in town (only one place to chose from). Service - not too good, Kees blood pressure got up. Food - very average and at tourist type prices. Next, we will head over to visit the Gipsens' friends.

Maine 07/2008 Day 1

The Freelands and Gispens and I head off to Maine for a little sailing.

We begin our Maine adventure in Southwest Harbor, where we visit the Hinckley Boat Yard and check out a repaired Hinckley sail boat being returned to the water.

Hinckley also makes motor boats (very nice ones).

After our tour of the Hinckleys, we head back to the harbor and pick up our sail boat (it's not a Hinckley)

Catherine is none too pleased with our accommodations; she is no doubt trying to figure out how seven folk (some of us being large americans) are going to be able to live on this small boat.

This is the forward berth, where Catherine and Cynthia will bed down. It's not like those comfortable catamarans we had in the Caribbean, which had four spacious cabins (with 4 toilets too).

This is aft cabin. Hale just loves it when I talk nautical.

Cynthia is trying to figure out how in the world we are going to get all of our beer, wine, and Scotch stored in here.

Here is Jason, Cynthia, Hale, and Catherine doing what we do best, getting ready to eat.

Jeannie and Kees here, our eating done, we get ready to take the boat out of the harbor.

Right after this nice scene, we hit some thick fog and almost ran aground on the rocks, then almost broadsided an anchored boat . . .. None of this would have happened if we had been able to get the boat's GPS working. Fortunately, Kees had a pocket GPS with the charts (that's water talk for maps) we needed. We didn't know it at the time, but this equipment failure was to recur and cause us to seek repairs.

After we survived our initial scare(s), we had a beautiful day with some great sailing.

As the day draws to a close, it's time to start thinking about a libation and some foods.

Oregon 07/2008 Asa Day 8

After a great morning of taking the waters, Asa and I forgo a vegetarian lunch and head into Detroit for a bacon cheese burger. Then we continue our travels through the mountains to Bagby Hot Springs.

The hike to the Springs is very nice, most of it follows this river.

Here is a small water fall were the trail crosses the river.

Once we get to the Springs, we check out some of the area. This is an old growth tree.

The trail up to the Springs is a gateway into a Wilderness Area and this is an Old Ranger Station that was a base of operations for this area.

Now, let's get to the soaks. Here is the source of one of the Hot Springs.

Hot water makes it way from this source to the main soaking area through a series of Rub Goldberg type canals and flumes.

For the modest, here is one of the private soaking spaces.
Hot water is feed through the flume and spigot at the back of the soaking log. You have to use buckets to bring cold water from the cistern in order to cool the water down to a comfortable soaking temperature.

Ahhh. This is one of the large red wood soaking tubs.

Notice the hot and cold running water to the left. There is a flume system to feed hot water and a cold water spring siphon too. Asa is using the cold water hose here. All of this without any electricity or pumps.

About a half mile down the trail is this water fall, which doubles as a shower for all the wilderness folk.

Asa is seeing how this natural shower works.

Well, our soaking done, we head toward Mount Hood.

We make it to the Timberline Lodge and have this view of the Cascades and Mount Jefferson.

This is the Timberline Lodge. If it looks familiar, it was the outside of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining with Jack Nicholson.

This is the big knocker on the front door of the Lodge.

This is the view of Mount Hood from the Lobby of the Timberline Lodge.

We dined here in the Cascade Dinning Room.

This is one of the many animal cravings one finds in the Lodge.

The Blue Ox Bar was not open.

The Lobby. We didn't spend the night here, as we had to catch a red-eye flight home in Portland, but we did enjoy our meal. We washed off the trail dust and got cleaned up for our trip home in the sauna area.

Asa all cleaned up at the back of the Timberline Lodge and about to head home.