Some Landscape Clean Up

 When you live in a place 30+ years, things start to get overgrown.

Dad having fun with his favorite toy.

Now I have somewhere to plant hydrangeas. I will put them on each side of the front steps. You can see where Dad stopped power washing the porch. He got almost to the steps. I think we will stain or paint the porch this fall.

First Day of School!

Hard to believe it's the first day of school already. Danny is pumped! He had to wear his "senior" shirt. I'm sure he'll tell everyone he sees, that he's a "senior" this year! (Just in case they didn't know!)  Jean's a freshman this year. Yikes! My baby is in high school! She wasn't quite as excited as Danny but maybe a little excited. They got their old bus route back. That mean's they get picked up at 6:34. It also mean's they will be home a half hour earlier than last year. Probably around 2:45.

Last Day in Maine - Baxter State Park

Danny took this picture of Dad.

We checked out of the townhouse on Saturday morning and headed up to Baxter State Park. We didn't realize that it is a Wildlife Preservation and they only allow so many cars into the parking areas. When we got there, we stopped at Park Headquarters in Millenocket. We were told that the parking lots were full. But they said we could go up to the park entrance (8 miles) and see if anyone had turned in their pass. We were lucky as two cars had just returned their passes for the pond where the moose feed. We were pretty pumped to hike out there and actually see one feeding in the water. She was not afraid of us and stayed there the whole time we were there. By then it was late in the afternoon and they said if there was room in the parking lot where the falls were, we could just go in. We ended up hiking a couple miles on this trail in the picture above. It was a work out but fun.

We ended up back in Bangor for the night Saturday. We didn't have reservations because we weren't sure how long we would be in Baxter and if we would start heading east before evening. That was a mistake. All we could find was a "smoking room" in a dive. It was pretty bad but we didn't have much choice as it was 9:30 on a Saturday night in August in Maine. We spent one more night on the road in Queensbury New York and got home Monday night. We thoroughly enjoyed the ride through upstate New York. Very picturesque.