Maine 2019: Day 1

Year Two, Day 1

Last year, my extended family spent two weeks of vacation in Bar Harbor, Maine. My mom, sisters, their husbands and children all joined us for the event. We spent most of our time exploring Bar Harbor itself as well as Acadia National Park, which occupies a majority of Mount Desert Island.

We all enjoyed ourselves sufficiently that we chose to return again this year. Plus, as an added bonus, my sister Susan and her fiancé have chosen to tie the knot right here in Bar Harbor. That will be at the end of next week, at the very end of our stay.

Getting here

Our drive from Richmond to Maine well smoothly and uneventfully until, well, it didn't. As we left Richmond on a Friday morning, I decided that it would behoove us to avoid Interstate 95 (and, in turn, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City). Instead, we headed up toward Washington and then swung to the north and west, pointing the car at Scranton, Pennsylvania. Once in Scranton, we hopped onto Interstate 84 and it was a straight shot east to  Danbury, Connecticut, our destination for the evening. My plan worked perfectly; we traveled traffic-free the entire way. On Saturday, however, things went south quickly. In my zeal to avoid all metropolitan areas, I had forgotten about Boston. Although we didn't travel through Boston but rather took the 495 Beltway around it, we ran into an ungodly amount of traffic, mixed in with tens of thousands of weekend warriors heading to the beaches of southern Maine. We lost about two hours in that traffic, but once we had put it behind us, we sailed the rest of the way to Bar Harbor without incident.

For the record, we don't have any baby or grand-baby just yet. That stroller is home to Sophie Grace, our Scottish Terrier that is traveling with us for this trip.

The Common Good Soup Kitchen

The Common Good Soup Kitchen is located in Southwest Harbor, on the southern side of Mount Desert Island. Throughout the year, they provide many thousands of meals to the local, indigent community. They are supported financially in large part by their "Popover Sundays," which features live music and the most delicious popovers you've have the chance to sample. Popover Sunday, picture at right, was the highlight of our first day here in Maine.

Eli's sendoff

Eli gets on a plane on July 29th to head to Tucson for his new job at Kitt Peak National Observatory. Since we will be here in Maine when he leaves, we celebrated his sendoff before we left.

On Sunday night, Alison and I dined with Eli and his girlfriend Faith at The Boathouse at Rockett's Landing in Richmond. This is the restaurant our family always uses for special occasions.

On Wednesday night, we hosted his official sendoff dinner party at our home, with all of our local family joining us to wish Eli well.

Although Eli plays his emotions pretty close to his vest, he definitely seemed to enjoy the experience.

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Tidbit #1

Did you ever wonder from where the phrase "tie the knot" derives? Well, I did and so I looked up a definition from the all-knowing and utterly fallible Internet:

The origin of "tying the knot" is either from the Roman times when the bride's girdle was tied in knots on the wedding day and the groom had to untie the knots prior to consummating the marriage or more likely from the Celtic (pagan) marriage ceremony of handfasting, where the hands of the bride and groom were tied together for a marriage "contract" of one year plus one day that the newlyweds promised to stay together prior to the marriage becoming "legal."  If the husband and wife decided at that point they were not for each other they would part.  If not, the marriage was then forever.

Tidbit #2

With an area of 108 square miles, Mount Desert Island is the second largest island on the Eastern seaboard of the United States, smaller than Long Island in New York (1401 square miles) but larger than Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts (96 square miles).