Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summertime

So much has been happening here this summer. We have been savoring all the nice warn summer days and long evenings together. We take advantage of our evenings and days off together and have really enjoyed making many fun memories this way.

We had been wanting to hike Bubble Rock for quite a while. A couple of the other girls hiked it a while ago, so of course, we had to try it too. After hiking up Sargent Mountain it didn't seem nearly so long, but we still got off onto a wrong trail. Leave it up to us!

                                The view was just amazing! Seeing things like this is so refreshing.

One evening Matt and Torrie stopped by for some firewood. They were heading down to the camp for a bonfire on the beach, and asked if anyone else wanted to come along. We had a great time roasting marshmallows. It was a beautiful sunset too! It's so quiet down there in the evenings...there's no place like it for a nice little get away.

We got Dad a honey extractor a while ago, but this was the first year we were able to try it out. Dad collected several pounds of honey from one of his hives this summer, so we had a blast extracting it out of the frames. Then we can reuse the comb and Dad can give it back to the bees so they don't have to build up the comb again. We ended up getting about four to five gallons of honey. We were very thankful!

We were so excited to find another catch in one of our traps the other day. We had to throw the female back because she had eggs, but we got to keep these two. One of them was soft shell and one was hard shell.

So the update on the lobstering is that the old saying is true...blue boats definitely DO sink. :-) It was so funny! We received two calls one day notifying us that our boat had turned over. We went down to the camp to find the bow sticking up out of the water. She was upside down with the stern sitting on the bottom of the ocean. But Dad and Matt came to the rescue and got it out with Matt's boat. Thank the Lord for the safety!! We lost some things, but the engine finally runs again, and will soon be for sale. It's very heavy for the boat, so we will have to look for a smaller outboard...maybe a 20 or 25hp.

Lost our fishing gloves and gaff, but that's okay. We are working on getting our traps in for the season using our row boat. What alot of fun! When we got in the other day, that board in the stern for the outboard ripped  up and we could see the hole where the boat was leaking. We were SO thankful for the safety because it could just as easily have ripped off when we hauled the trap up on.

Only two more traps to get in. We lost one trap because it got tangled in someone's old fishing line, but that's the way it goes. The other two traps are quite a ways out, so we'll have to see if we can get our boat in the water and drive it around to pick them up. But we'll see.

One Mooring in Maine

After getting some new fuel in the gas tank in the boat, we decided to give her another try. So Jay came over to help us, and we took her out. Dad went down to the warf with us and then drove over to the camp to get the skiff ready for us to row in when we got around.

This is our mooring that Dad helped us make. Someone else gave us the idea of how you can make your own mooring with concrete, and it has worked real well! You see there are two different sizes of chains. The large chain is the ground chain that acts as kind of like a spring as the tide comes in and goes out or as the boat moves. The small chain is the light chain that hooks onto the ball. Then we have rope from the ball to the boat.

It was a little bit rough the evening we took it out to moor it in the reach, so there was a lot of sea spray in our faces, but it felt great!! Pam drove us around, and Jay went with us of course in case we had engine failure.

Our tags came! Yay! We get to have five traps, and you have to get new tags every year.

Getting the buoys tide onto the end of the ropes. We couldn't wait to get them out! 

Just for the record....do not use this bait that we decided to try!! :-) Bait was kind of hard to come by at the time, so we decided to try sardines. Not a good idea! The lobsters didn't think it was a good idea either, I guess...(See my nifty little knife? It comes in real handy if you need to cut rope or get the bait apart or anything like that.)

All ready to go! I know that pink isn't the most popular color for buoys, but our friends that also go lobstering told us you want big and bright when it comes to choosing your buoys or else the sail boats will run them over. So we got big and bright! (Besides, I don't think other fishermen would want to be seen hauling up traps with pink buoys on them, so probably they won't steel them.) :-)

Just a little water to bail. Gramp says it's bad luck to have a blue boat because blue boats always sink, but he said as long as it's not light blue your all set, so hopefully we are all set. It's a good thing someone painted over the light blue.

We drove in to load the traps onto the boat. It was great because we were able to fit all five traps on this boat. Last year we had to just do one or two at the most because that's all the little boat could handle.

Maiden Voyage

Well, our new impeller unit finally arrrived! A neighbor down the road works at the boat house over in Brooklin, and he was a big help to us...lending us his muffs to try out the outboard without filling a big tub of water. We eventually got our own because it was so nifty! He also gave us some oil for it. Anyway, Dad let me help put on the new impeller and we were ready to try it out. So we hooked up the hose to the muffs and it was definitely cycling the water through better. We were so thankful! Now it was time to take it out down to the town landing. So one of us called Matt and he came down to help us launch it.

We got it out and for some reason it was sputtering and not turning over. We didn't know what was wrong with it, so meanwhile we started drifting out into the harbor. Thankfully, Dad had given us some wise instructions to take oars with us in the boat...just in case. So we were able to start paddling back. The whole thing was so hilarious! When we got back Jay seemed quite confident he could get it going, so he peeled off his boots and socks and jumped on with us.

We still sputtered a little bit, and a friendly fisherman asked us if we needed an oar or needed help getting back in, but it wasn't long before the engine turned over Jay got it going.

We had taken off the cap to try to find out what could be wrong with it. It looked so redneck! We had a great time!

                                                           Big brothers are the best!

We got out in the harbor and were having so much fun that we forgot that the tide was slowly coming in on Jason's boots. When we were coming in near the land we noticed Matt was pointing to something. We were confused at first until we saw a boot floating on top of the water just a little ways from shore.

Most people use their gaff for lobstering...we use it for rescuing our shoes from floating out to sea. hahaha

Jay told us we needed new gas, because we still had the old stuff in it. So we got some new gas in it and she ran way better! We'll share some pictures of putting out our mooring in the next post.

4th of July Weekend

Our 4th of July weekend couldn't have been better. First of all, Charity and I decided that we were going to spend Friday night down at the camp. We had a thunderstorm that night, but when you plan to sleep down at the camp you never go down with the goal of being able to actually catch up on sleep. You go down with the goal of having fun and sleep goes on the back burner.

The next morning started with fog then cleared off to be a beautiful day. We always enjoy mornings at the camp, watching the sun come out and wake everything up.

Sunday night April, Pam, Charity, and I decided to have a sleep over at Gramp and Gram's. We had a great time staying up late, laughing and talking as always. "We didn't get much sleep, but we had alot of fun."

 This is the view from Gramp and Gram's back deck on the morning of the 4th. When we were little, Gramp used to tell us Clem the Clam stories. They always started the same way, "It was the most beautiful day you ever saw in all your life." Well, we definitely had a Clem the Clam morning that morning. It was gorgeous! 

                            It makes for a great place to have your devotions in the morning...sitting out on the back deck on the porch swing.

                                     Mum is always happy when she has a baby in her arms! Lots of fun!

I took this picture after we got back from water tubing out on Patten Pond. Matt got a boat earlier this year, and he got a tube so he could pull us out on the pond. It was our first experience water tubing, and we all fell off the first time, but before we left the pond we all managed to be able to have a ride without falling off. The water was really warm compared to the ocean water down at the camp. What a blast it was! Can't wait to do it again! Thanks a ton, Matt!

Pam, Charity, and I stopped for some ice cream at the store, then headed down to Stonington to watch fireworks. This is a quick picture of the sunset from the Deer Isle bridge.

You can't see this picture very well, but I had to put it in just because it was so funny. How do you expect to be able to watch the fireworks when the pier is so crowded with people? That's what your boat is for. All you have to do is get a five gallon bucket, walk up on your boat, climb up on top of the cabin, turn the bucket upside down and sit down to watch the fireworks there. I think he had a great idea!

Time to go to town meeting. They wanted to make some changes to the town dock and help accommodate some of the commercial fishermen, so we had a town meeting Thursday night to discuss it and vote on it. We voted on one other thing too, but overall, it was pretty short and to the point. We had a good turnout for it, though.

Summer Memories

Earlier this year we made a list of things that we wanted to do together this summer. We just didn't want the days to slip by and everyone just goes to work and we don't actually end up making our own memories throughout the year. So one of the things on the list was hiking. We have been trying out several new places recently. There are just so many spots that are amazing and beautiful places to go.

One day the girls and Mum met me after work and we went to hike The Great Slide Trail over on Mt. Desert Island. At first we wondered why it was called the great slide trail when it wasn't even very hard.

THEN we found out!! It was wicked steep and it's a good thing we weren't carrying much because you had to use your hands to get over some of those places.

There were rocks to climb under and rocks to squeeze between! So fun! Not for beginners or the faint of heart! It was amazing because there were some rocks that looked like they were just barely staying up on the side of the mountain, but they were solid! There was no way they were moving! It brought to mind the verse that says the Lord will hide me in the cleft of the rock. I love seeing things in creation like that. They bring new meaning to verses like that.

There's no better place for relaxation on a Sunday afternoon than down at the camp on the beach. I wanted to get a picture of this sail boat as it went by, but it was kind of far away, so I decided to take a picture through the binoculars, and this is what it looked like. Kind of pretty, I think.

Life At It's Best

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's has been beautiful this Spring with the lilacs coming in in full swing and then now the lupines and buttercups. We are SO blessed to be able to live in the best place on earth. Somehow, America seems a little more free when you live in a small town on the coast of Maine.

                                             An evening walk down to the boat houses.

 Butch's field's are always so pretty no matter what time of year it is! With this view on one side of the road and the harbor on the other, it makes for a very peaceful place to walk. We love walking and jogging down there.

What's a rowboat without a leak? Charity and I decided it was about time we go out on our first rowboat adventure for the season. Well, when we got in, we noticed a new leak that hadn't been there last year. Oh well, nothing a little bucket won't fix. So Charity went up to the camp and grabbed a bucket and we were off! It was the most peaceful evening! I guess the seals even thought it was pretty too, because they popped their heads up every now and then to get a glimpse of the sunset with us. I love the seals. They are so cute.

After a failed attempt to get our rowboat to sail last summer, we decided that we had better choose a different boating industry. Somehow you lose some of the peace and relaxation of sailing when you are standing up in your boat in the middle of the reach, trying to keep your balance as you hold a sheet above your head. Needless to say, it didn't take us long to realize we needed to choose a new boating career. So I took a test and got my recreational lobstering license. We had two traps last year. We like doing it by hand, the old fashioned way you know, by hauling them up manually without a mechanical pot hauler. But after carrying a heavy aluminum boat down the beach, rowing out to the first trap, hauling it up, baiting and setting it again, rowing to the next one and doing the same thing, then rowing in and carrying the boat back up the beach again, we had to think of something a little faster and safer. So we prayed if it was the Lord's will for us to do it again, then He'd provide us with something safer. He helped Charity to spot this beauty up on the Ridge Road. They sold us the boat, trailer, and 65hp outboard with it. We've been running around getting parts and Dad's been working alot at fixing stuff so it's almost ready to launch now. Can't wait! Have to share more about it later! Need to make a mooring and a little outrigger, then she'll be ready to go.