A Day in Maine

Last Saturday Kathy and I made a picnic and headed two hours north to the coast of Maine. It was one of those sparkling days Maine gives you once in a while, all bright light and sky, rock and ocean.


Ogunquit is an artsy tourist town, awash with people in the summer, but delightful in the Fall and Spring. Maine is not generally known for beaches, but this part of the South Coast has some good ones.


Sailors love the Maine coast, which is the second longest of the fifty states, since there are all sorts of interesting bays, rivers, and even fjords, with strange patterns of wind and tide.


We walked a mile and a half to a Perkins Cove, a little lobstering port (where Kathy managed to buy a latte!)


Drawbridges, strangely rigged boats, and other idiosyncratic contrivances suggest a lost population of inspired inventors.


Flowers brightened the path by one of the hotels on the path back--asters, phlox, roses, lobelia, cosmos, helenium, dahlias, amaranthus, and physotegia, "the obedient plant."

On the way back, in addition to hitting the outlet malls at Kittery and stopping for a fried oyster dinner and blueberry pie, we swung by Nubble Light.


It was a great and memorable day. Next time some of you make it back here and we get a promising day, Ogunquit's a trip worth considering.

LABOR DAY WEEK-END WITH JIMMY IN SANTA FE

Lucky me--I got to spend 3 days with Jimmy (and others) in beautiful Santa Fe, my first trip there. Not only did I get to see Jimmy's haunts first-hand, I also got together (after 40 years!) with my old college roommate, Jerry RIghtman, and his wife, Roberta. So without too much more blather, here are the views, in chronological order:

Saturday we went to Bandelier National Monument, about an hour northwest of town. We met Jerry in town and headed on out. Here are the 2 old Aggies above the canyon at Bandelier.

The monument is famous for the (don't say Anisazi, say) ancient Pueblo ruins. Here's a more modern New Mexican gaining some elevation:


And one of the more ancient ones...


After touring the ruins, Jerry headed home and Jimmy and I spent the afternoon on an 8 mile hike upstream, going down into the canyon, then back out again.


On Sunday we let Jerry and Roberta be our tour guides, wandering around downtown, checking out Santa Fe's 400 year anniversary party--that's where we got Jimmy in the pick-up truck. Then out to Chimayo, a village with an old church and lots of worshipers and pilgrims. That evening we went out to J&R's house, 12 miles from town. They are both retired veterinarians, and they have an unbelievable collection of Mexican folk art, all displayed on every available surface throughout their house. Here are 2 examples, just the tip of the folk-art iceberg.

In his retirement Jerry is an expert on art history and a local tour guide, so we joined his group for a walking historical and architectural tour of downtown Santa Fe. Then I got to see more of Jimmy's domain. Here he is in front of his house.


Then on to his lab.

Here he is with 4 of the 8 DNA sequencers, some of the extremely fun toys he gets to work with.


After lunch we headed off for another hike, this time to Tent Rocks Nat'l Monument, about an hour west of town. As you can see, the formations are quite dramatic!

And that was it--a lot of interest, amazement and excitement packed into 3 days. I look forward to getting back there and seeing still more.