Sunday Salon -- Back Home

Lovely panoramic view taken from the window of our AirBnB in Hope, Maine.

Weather: This past week we've had windy weather with a bit of rain. The wind stripped the Purple Mountain Ash tree and its beautiful leaves blanketed our lawn. The maple is just starting to turn colors and I imagine the next few weeks we'll see her glory.

Highlights from our visit to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, with a special exhibit of Dali paintings.

We're home from our delightful Northeast trip to Massachusetts and Maine: We spent four days in Boston, walking the Freedom Trail, cramming in as many sights as we could manage into our short time there. Then we flew up to Bar Harbor, Maine on a little nine-seater plane and visited Acadia, the easternmost National Park in the US. We weren't alone. A lot of other people were visiting, too, as we all wanted to see the fall colors which were just starting to show. It was lovely though, even if a bit crowded where we were all vying for precious parking places. During our stay in Bar Harbor we stopped at a popular roadside restaurant and had our first lobster dinners, plastic bibs and all! We enjoyed it so much we went back the next day for lobster rolls. Delicious. (I didn't think I liked lobster before this! Ha!) For the last leg of our trip, we drove a rental car down to an AirBnB near Camden, Maine, joining our friends, Ken and Carol, who drove up from their home in New Jersey. Ken was attending a two-week woodworking class and the rest of us explored the region, taking hikes, visiting scenic harbors, and a wonderful botanical garden. The photos show a few highlights of our trip.

Some Boston highlights beginning at the top, left to right: Boston Public Garden; The Freedom Trail marker; Bunker Hill monument; Paul Revere's home and garden; The Embrace (MLK + Coretta Scott King); the grand staircase Boston Public Library; "Make Way for Ducklings" in Boston Commons; Us inside Old North Church listening to National Parks Service App -- Boston National Historical Park (note we are listening together, each with one earpiece); a box full of cannoli's from Mike's Pastries.

Maine: Top row views from Acadia NP; Middle- Lobster dinner; Glorious colors; Don and Andre the Seal in Rockport; Bottom- Rockport Harbor; friends at the Beech Hill Preserve; Rockland breakwater (7/8 of a mile out to a lighthouse. Yes, we walked it!)

Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens -- including five giant trolls

 Books read and purchased on the trip:

• A Death in the Family by James Agee. I listened to this classic audiobook on our flight to Boston but didn't finish it until we got home two weeks later. Such a sad story.
• House Lessons: Renovating a Life by Erica Bauermeister. A book club selection. It was fun to discuss this book with Carol since her daughter is an architect. I finished the book with one day left in Maine before we traveled home.
• Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout. I bought this book because it is set in Maine but I barely got it started before we were on our way home. 75% completed.
• How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope edited by James Crews. I bought this little gem in the Beacon Hill Books and Cafe store. I insisted that we include this store as a visit while we explored Boston. I am making my way through it slowly.
• How to Be More Tree: Essential Life Lessons for Perennial Happiness illustrated by Annie Davidson. I make a point of buying something in every indy bookstore I enter, in hopes that I will help keep them afloat. I bought this little, artsy book in Arctic Tern Books in Rockland, Maine.

We left Rockland, Maine, on Thursday Oct. 10th, and started our journey home on another nine-seater plane. It is amazing to see Maine from the air. There are so many islands, bays, and harbors. We left Boston for our trip west later that evening. While we were up in the air I was able to see the aurora borealis. Here is my pretty funky photo taken through the  plane's little window.

Aurora borealis as seen somewhere over the US west of Boston, taken through the airplane window. Photo by A. Bennett

We got into Portland, Oregon around 11:30 PM and spent the night at a hotel near the airport where we'd parked our pickup two weeks earlier. Instead of driving home the next morning, we headed south to Eugene in readiness for the big University of Oregon/Ohio State football game on Saturday. In case you weren't paying attention, it was a very exciting game with seven lead changes. Oregon won the game by one point! It was so fun to be part of the crowd. At one point there was a 360 degree photo taken at the stadium that evening and I was able to find us in the photo.

I am the woman wearing a green hat with a green shirt in the second row of the photo. My sister is next to me in the yellow hat, my husband to my left (We are all making the "O" for Oregon sign with our hands). Mom is next to my sister. She is 95 years old and lasted the whole game and walked home with us afterwards. It was so exciting she didn't want to leave early, like she usually does. My cousin has the green finger pointing at him in the first row and his wife is behind the yellow and green blanket.

I'll close here and save all my thoughts about politics for next week. In the meantime, be sure to vote early, if you can.

Beautiful sunset. Hope, Maine!

The beauty of Maine in the fall. Photo by: C. Wenk.

-Anne