Summer: family, Maine, friends

I figured since it was the middle of July I should post something about the summer so far. That and I’ve been meaning to post about my Maine trip for a month.

My aunt and uncle were visiting from England, which meant the whole family got together in Beverly for lobsters! And had a photo shoot, in which someone had their eyes closed in almost every photo.

The siblings:

The sisters.

The men.

The ladies. (Look at how tall my 14-year-old cousin is!!)

It was the perfect day, weather-wise. I kept saying that it was an Oregon summer day – sunny, warm, and no humidity. We sat on the deck and ate tomato salad, corn salad, potato salad, and lobsters.

 

I went to Maine the following week for work, and got to see Jen M. on the drive up! I had the most delicious dinner at the Fiddlehead Restaurant in Bangor, and stayed in Orono in a hotel right on the river. Again, perfect weather. It was killing me that I had to be up and out super early the next day for the workshop, or else I would have loved to run along the path by the river.

The workshop was on a Friday in Old Town, ME (about an hour north of Colby), and featured the sweetest group of Mainers who played with magnets and pretended to be cars going through a model intersection. I’m constantly amazed that this is my job.

I drove down to Camden after the workshop to meet my parents, who had driven up with my aunt and uncle to hang out for the weekend. We stayed in cottages which had some issues with the hot water (there was none) the first day. I thought it was just taking a while to kick in, so I had a nice, refreshing shower.

We’ve stayed here before, the most recent time being in 2007:

We hiked up Mt. Megunticook to get a view of the harbor.

We also had breakfast at Cappy’s, ate delicious seafood for dinner, and went to Owl’s Head lighthouse. On Sunday as we were heading home, we stopped at Colby because I hadn’t been since 2008!

Unfortunately, Miller was under construction so we couldn’t go up the steps, there were no tours running, and overall it was very quiet. But we visited the new wing of the art museum, which was awesome.

As we were driving up it felt really weird to be back on the hill, but as soon as I got out of the car, it all came back. There are many changes with all the new buildings (and track! I have a chunk of the old one from when they tore it up after graduation), but it’s still Colby.

 

To round out this post, I’ve been doing a few local hikes with friends on the weekends. Laura and I had a proper adventure out in Lynn (mostly because I discovered my car had a nail in one tire).

Everything worked out fine, even if we got lost on the way home.

Up next: I thought it was crazy to sign up for a triathlon four days ahead of time, but my coworker and I convinced ourselves to do it, so that’s what we’ll be doing on Sunday. I’ve been playing soccer with a team and we have our last game before playoffs this weekend as well. Then comes August, when I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be around, ever – I’ll hopefully see Christine on the Cape, then I’m off to North Adams, MA for work, Ben and I plan on hiking some mountain in mid-August, then I’m in Wisconsin for a week for work/play. I love that every trip I’ve taken for work I’ve been able to extend into a fun visit. Here we go…