The second part of our vacation in Maine was even more mellow than the first part, believe it or not. Christmas day opened with my waking up early, and my convincing Mer that we should go to the breakwater to see the sunrise. It stuck me that it would be beautiful, and it probably was, somewhere. This particular day in Rockland, however, it was quite cloudy, so we did not really see a sunrise per se. Happily, it was much milder than the day I had tromped out on the breakwater earlier in the week. We finally gave up on seeing a sunrise (well after the sun was up), and we went back home. We munched and puttered, and we eventually got around to opening gifts (it is surprisingly hard to corral six adults used to their own disparate schedules). Later in the day there was continuing Skip-bo action, but that was about it for the day.
The next day (Saturday), we headed out around 10:00 am to head over to Dad’s in East Livermore. The drive is a little over 1.5 hours long, so we got to Dad’s a little before 12:00. We might have gone hungry, except Kellee is a great and prodigious cook. She had made three different kinds of whoopie pies in addition to a large Christmas dinner. Plus, I spent the afternoon making bread, which turned out well and disappeared quickly. So, the day was spent eating, watching some TV, and having Mer beat me at Dark and Stormy and Trivial Pursuit. Late in the evening, we watched an hour-long 1930s animated version of Gulliver’s Travels. Gulliver’s Travels is one of my all-time favorite books, but I was suspicious of the movie from the packaging. Words almost fail me at how bad it was – Gulliver only goes to Lilliput, and he does not appear until 25 minutes through an hour- long film. The first 25 minutes was a cooked-up story about two kingdoms having a marriage go bad. It included every stereotypical gag from 1930s animation – it creaked and groaned through a poor plot for what seemed a very long time. Yikes. After the film, we went to bed.
Sunday was spent reading and eating and using the computer and watching Mer grade papers. Monday we were social – we went all the way up to Jay (about 20 miles) to see my high school friend, John. John has been a good friend of mine for 25+ years. I had not seen John in about 5 years – his 8-year-old son is now 13, and he has a 4-year-old daughter who is very cute. John and his girlfriend Linda are friendly folks, and we spent a good amount of time chatting. John had also just gotten a Wii for Linda for Christmas, so we played The Price Is Right, through which I learned that I have no idea what things cost anymore. I still won both games because John “went over” in one game and in the other Mer was way under on prices. It was a good time. We had to cut the visit short because the roads were getting messy from snow, and Mer had to get home to grade. Back at Dad’s we watched a very interesting BBC series on nature with Dad and Kellee. We watched a show on the Arctic (focusing on bears), one on the Pacific salmon run, and one on wildebeest migration and the great cats that feed on them. The shows were beautifully done.
Tuesday’s highlights were twofold – my getting my butt kicked by Mer in Dark and Stormy, followed by seeing The Nightmare before Christmas. Neither of us had seen Nightmare before, and it had been lent to Mer by one of her students. It was excellent – original and entertaining, and the music was fun (in a twisted sort of way). My sister-in-law, Jo, loves the film, and I can see why.
Mer and I had originally planned on going home from Maine Friday-Saturday, but there was a very large storm forecast for the entire weekend. So, we made the decision to travel Wednesday-Thursday to stay ahead of the snow. But, to draw the vacation out a bit, we decided to go the scenic route. We went back to Rockland to see Gramps. I had bought him a new CD/tape player (his old one had broken), and I wanted to give it to him. I also had a gift certificate to The Boathouse, a Rockland restaurant, so we figured we would grab lunch there. Carleton’s great-grandsons were there, so Mer and I took on Carleton and Logan in a game of Skip-bo. Mer and I then went to lunch at The Boathouse. It is right on the water, and the front is all glass. It was breathtaking. The restaurant served mostly seafood (no surprise there), but I got a decent burger while Mer got some scallops. We dashed back to Rankin Street for one more game of Skip-bo (we split the two games), and then we headed south.
We were aiming for York, for a B and B on the coast. Along the way, we swung through Brunswick to stop by and see one of Mer’s college friends, Julie. Julie has twin four-year-old girls, whom we had not seen in 3 years – quite a change! Julie was just heading out to walk one of her dogs when we stopped by, so we left the girls in the care of Julie’s husband, Paul, and walked with her over to Bowdoin College. It was very cold, but it was cool to wander around the college. It is a pretty campus. After the 30-minute walk, we stopped by the house for another 20 minutes or so, but then had to go so that we could get a decent rest before the 12-hour drive on Thursday.
We got to the B and B in York about 7:30 and checked in. It is a pretty B and B, and is called The York Harbor Inn. It looked as if it had 30-40 rooms, all told. Our room had cool slanty ceilings, but I did crack my head on them a few times. We went to the restaurant to get something to eat, and we were disappointed that it took about 40 minutes to get our food, even though the place was not busy. We headed back up to the room and went to sleep, but I woke up in the wee hours to the heater in the room making noise. I turned it off, but it took me about 2 hours to fall back asleep. So much for a good night’s rest. In the morning, the heater no longer would throw out heat, which was too bad. We were on the third floor (where heat rises to), so we were not too cold, but it was a little frustrating. After a good continental breakfast, we checked out and were on the road about 9:00.
We did manage to avoid the big storm coming to Maine, but we did hit a smaller storm for much of the western half of Massachusetts. We were always able to go at least 35 mph, but it did slow us down quite a bit, and I was not sad to drive out of it once we reached New York. We drove back into another storm a few hours later, but by then it had changed to rain. We were very lucky. We stopped outside of Buffalo to grab supper at Denny’s (not a happening stop on New Year’s Eve at 6:00), and then made it safely home around 10:00. We could have gone to one of two New Year’s Eve parties, but we were pretty wiped. Mer rang in the new year while reading next to my sleeping form.
We spent the last three days of vacation at home catching up on life. It was not a bad way to transition back out of vacation and back into school.