Just what does your middle age child like to do?  There are so many choices, that i recommend finding a focus and sticking with the theme for your vacation adventure.

Here are 4 focus adventures that can create that favorite vacation time.

Focus 1 – photography.   Camera’s ready..  Find a theme.   Nature, from a kids perspective (everything looks big), rocks around you,  trees and people.   Who lives here.   Have fun, develop ideas and let your kid choose the shots, or take them – depending on interest.    Maybe it’s funny faces – people, animals, dogs.  Perhaps just creating a story about your trip.   Have them start out at home, getting ready, then the actual getting there – has to be documented.   Where are you staying?   What are the big things you will be doing.   Think about scrap-booking the trip for a permanent record of your treasured trip.

Focus 2 – art and nature.    It”s interesting what kind of things art is to different people.   For some, its pen and pencil, others colors with crayons or colored pencils.    Paint is easy to bring along and can be used to make all kinds of creations.    Often rocks make good canvas, but sketch books work well too.    Art can also be modeling clay, the kind you shape and bake.   Model what you see around you, whether it’s natural or man made.   Model different modern things, like cars and photograph them in natural surroundings.    Make a stop action movie, with tiny characters hanging around giant trees, or in perilous situations.   Oh no, watch again as clay annie and andy get caught in a rock slide.

Focus 3 – the animals around us.   The park has many places to view and visit and learn about the creatures that we live with on MDI,    Here’s an incredible video of two baby raccoons at Seawall campground at Acadia National Park.  You can find them in books, movies, and out in the wild.   Sometimes you have to be willing to be out in very early morning, or late evening to get a chance to see some wildlife around Acadia.   Other times you have to be willing to get out where it is a bit unusual, like a cave mouth at dawn, or a beach or on the ocean in the middle of the night for the best sights.     Places to go to – Ed’s dive in starfish enterprize, the Oceanarium, Anenome Cave, The Northeast Marsh, the Oven caves, Somes Sound, the top of the mountain.   Who lives around the ponds, how about the forests, how about the ocean.

Focus 4 – the active life outdoors.    Get out and about.   Challenge yourself to hike farther than you ever have before.   Start with a half mile hike.   Increase your distance and time out on the hike by half mile every day.    When you have mastered a 3 miles hike, start adding vertical challenges.   Have your hike climb up higher and higher.   Celebrate when you reach the top of Cadillac mountain, the highest peak on the eastern seaboard.    If you’d rather, this challenge can be on bicycle or it can be out on the water in a kayak.    Just pick some adventure, and start slow and small.   Build up to your goal and get there.   Don’t forget to write about your adventure, so that you can remember each step.

Don’t forget about the junior ranger program at the visitors center.   It’s free this year, there is a great activity book that the park provides to guide you in your adventure vacation.

College of the Atlantic’s FAMILY NATURE CAMP

Tel: (800) 597-9500 or (207) 801-5634

Located at College of the Atlantic, , 105 Eden Street Bar Harbor, Maine 04609

Ranked among the top-five family camps in the U.S. by Good Morning America and Family Fun Magazine, College of the Atlantic’s week-long Family Nature Camp is the vacation you and your family will talk about for years to come.
Under the guidance of experienced naturalists, you will delight in the wonder and adventure of the outdoors as you sight humpbacks and seals on your whale watch and nature cruises, hold sea creatures on the Starfish Enterprise, dip your hand in warm tide pools, hike the trails of Acadia National Park, visit beaver lodges, put together the bones of a Minke Whale, and delight in the tales of the “Bug Man.” You will share all this and more with other families, who will become your life-long friends, in one of the most beautiful vacations spots in America. Suitable for adults and children 5 years and older.

Rates:  405 900

summer@coa.edu

http://www.familynaturecamp.com

If you are coming to MAINE with children of any age  there are a few activities that you should consider including in your plans.     I will start with activities for children under 7 years old, then the 8-13 age range and finally 14 and above.   In future articles I will explore activities for each age group in more depth.

Age Seven And Under:

The Junior Ranger program only takes two simple trips to the visitor center, but can be a significant adventure for your child. The program involves a child friendly exploration of the park including animals, the forest, and geological secrets. The program also includes storytelling and meeting a real park ranger to receive a badge for a reward.

Small kids enjoy walking/biking around and exploring the carriage trails.   You can rent a trailer bike that attaches to a normal sized bike and allows your child to share the fun of biking with increased safety and decreased fatigue.  There are no cars allowed on the carriage roads.   The child needs to be able to balance, so the appropriate age for this activity is usually around 5 years old.

Beach visits.   Bring the sand pails, shovels and beach towels (we have them to borrow here at SeaCat’s Rest).   There are three sandy beaches in the area.   Adventures await at Sand Beach; the only sand beach on the ocean.   Cold water usually limits swim times, but just hanging around in the sand is relaxing for all ages.   For warmer water, Acadia park has a swimming beach at Echo Lake. Wildlife is plentiful at the lake, ducks waddle on the shore while minnows dart in the shallows.  Both beaches at Acadia have lifeguards.  Here in Lamoine we have a small town beach for residents located on Blunts’ Pond.   If you stay with us, you are welcome there.

Visit the Nature Center for a close up look at the wildlife in the park.   Children can record animals they have seen in the center’s logbook.  Consider a visit to the nature museum at the College of the Atlantic.   There they have small scenes where animals are depicted within their habitats.

The Bangor Children’s Museum (Maine Discovery Museum) is worth the hour’s drive.   You can also arrange a visit on your way in or out of town.

For activities off island, visit the Ellsworths’ Treasure Island Toystore. The store has a good selection books and educational toys  and is located on Main street.

Any age kid would love a ride on the Diver Ed’s boat.   While it’s not the cheapest way to get on the water, you get a lot of laughs,  fun, and scenery for your investment (and the kid won’t notice how much they are learning about the sea and it’s creatures).   Diver Ed goes overboard with a camera, and brings up creatures for hands on visits, then they go back into the sea.

Middle age 8-13 year old.

Childrens Programs at Acadia.   The National Park also has a set of programs geared  for the 8-13 year old age group.   Find out about these at the visitors center.   I highly recommend the night tour, where you visit Carrol homestead and walk the trails without any lights.    The night sky around here is wonderful and you’ll be amazed at how much you can really see.

Junior ranger program geared for readers. The booklet has puzzle and activities geared for this age group.

Visit the Oceanarium in Southwest Harbor and The Maine Lobster Museum and Marsh Tour with the Lobster Hatchery.    Ever wonder what baby lobsters look like or how they spend their time as youngsters?    Tumbling tubes of fun await you as you learn about the life of lobsters.   The touch tank at Southwest Harbor Oceanarium is a place my daughter wanted to spend all afternoon at this age.

Develop a kid’s eye view of Acadia.  Get your kids some cameras and let them choose and take the photos.    This gets them involved and helps them develop a sense of how this place is different from home.   I highly recommend letting this happen any way it will.    Disposable cameras were made for this option.

Go on a hike. By using the Island Explorer bus service to get to a hiking spot,  you can hike through without making a return trip.    The Island Explorer is free; you can get on and off as you choose.   I recommend ending your trip at Jordon Pond house for some ice cream or tea and popovers if your crowd is more reserved.    Gorham Mountain is only 525 feet high and offers ocean views.

Keep an animal log or a log of the trip .   Make drawings/sketches or get a coloring book, and color in the animals as you see them.    Animals are easy to find in Acadia.   Seagulls, eagles, squirrels, chipmunks, seals in the water, beavers at the ponds, white-tailed deer (which are not hunted on the island), some fish, tidepool creatures and mussels in the water.   Every day crows announce their arrival each morning around our house.   We also have gold finches, woodpeckers, chickadees, phoebes and thrushes around in the woods.    Two bald eagles nest nearby – and we see them almost every day here.    I can’t keep the deer away from my garden, and there are two fox dens nearby our house.

A Whale Tour works for this middle age group of kids and older.   You get some great photo opportunities on the way out and in too.      These tours are are best booked in the morning in my estimation, but it is a bit colder then.   Pack warm clothes with you for your visit, plan on at least three layers of clothing for the best comfort.

Take a guided tour on OLLIE’S Trollie.   If you just need to sit and relax, a guided tour is the way to go.    Learn about the history while the best scenery is right outside your window.   It will help you decide where you want to spend the rest of your time in Acadia.

Ages 14 and above. For this older group try to find activities where they are on their own for a while.   Try hiking yourself on the carriage trails while they bike up and around the challenging hill. Try kayaking, or send them on a guided kayak tour while you rest up and get some vacation reading done.

If  sailing or riding on a lobster boat is not on your own wish list, you can find tours to send them on where they will be well guided.  Letting them bike around on one of the offshore islands is also a good idea – you’ll know where they are without hovering all day.   Suntans can be had in Maine, especially if you have a lovely spot to sit out.

Letting them explore the shops in Bar Harbor is also possible – it’s only about seven blocks, and you can easily arrange to meet for dinner or lunch after giving them their hang time.    Teens like to visit the town parks, and meeting people is one of the best parts of vacation.   The Island Explorer bus system can get your teen anywhere on the island with enough planning.    There are basketball courts and day camp opportunities if you’d rather have some structure in their day.   There are also sailing clubs for young folks through the Harbor House in Southwest Harbor.

Tennis is available at all three towns on the island.   Horseback riding can be arranged on the carriage trails, but plan ahead, as these get booked up well in advance.

Have your child take pictures and create a family trip log with pictures and stories of the vacation.    For teenagers at Seacat’s Rest, we can arrange a glowing night tour of the bay for those with kayak experience.

Bar Harbor from the Cadillac summit

Vacation season is almost upon us! An Acadia adventure awaits. This is one of those posts I’ve been meaning to write for a long time since it is an attempt to answer the question I hear most often.  I will try to list the Top Ten in reverse priority (#10 first) and give alternatives when possible. Some choices are weather-related and so should be shuffled in the priority as necessary.

10.  A visit off island. It’s important to see the “real” Maine, away from the remarkable beauty of Mt. Desert Island. Two of my recommended off-island trips are to Stonington on Deer Isle (1-1/2 hours, 58 miles), a real fishing village and former granite quarry. See Kathleen’s post about the Settlement Quarry and the Crockett Cove Woods. The second choice is Castine (1-1/2 hours, 53 miles). Castine is great for history buffs. You can see remains of old Fort George built by the Brits. Castine is interesting because it was claimed at various time by the  French, British, Dutch and finally the Americans. There is also a lighthouse and the Mane Maritime Academy.

9.   Shopping, Brewery, Museums. I would love to claim we have perfect weather in the summer, but if you find the outdoors soggy, you should have some indoor options. Go here to see museums associated with College of the Atlantic. Try the Abbe Museum, 26 Mt. Desert, open 10 AM to 4 PM, Thursday to Saturday from late May through early November for Maine’s Native American story.  Southwest Harbor’s Oceanarium is a hit with kids.  A brewery tour is on tap at Atlantic Brewing at Town Hill while shopping is always an option in downtown Bar Harbor.

8.   Beach Time. Finding a place to stretch out in the sand or swim is not that easy on the rocky shore. There are two great options. The first is Sand Beach, the first  stop on the Park Loop Road after the pay gate  ($20 per week per vehicle). This is on the ocean so taking a dip may involve pain. For a warmer option try Echo Lake Beach on Rt. 102 just north of Southwest Harbor. This is a great place for kids. For a walk on a stony ocean shore, try Seawall, on Rt 102A just south of Southwest Harbor.

7.   Explore Anenome Cave. This is a little known place and you need me to tell  you where it is.  It is also a little dangerous; the rocks are slippery and it is possible to get trapped in the cave if the tide is on the move or the waves are high. Visit at low tide in calm seas. Drive to the Schooner Head parking lot, the last stop before the pay gate on the Park Loop Road.  The trail will lead to the shore and the cave is ten minutes or so away along the shore (follow the shore south, to the right). Inside are tide pools with pink anenomes and other interesting sea creatures and plants, some which seem to be adapted to low light conditions. Please see Sarah’s comments at the bottom of this entry.

6. Dinner at a Lobster Pound. Our two favorites are at Beal’s Pier at the end of Clark Point Rd in Southwest Harbor and Abel’s Lobster Pound on Abel’s Lane off Rt. 198 on the way to Northeast Harbor at the top of Somes Sound.   Any place can boil a lobster. What you want is the real Maine experience that goes with it. Don’t expect elegance. An occasional whiff of bait may be in the air, but the views are awesome.

5.  Hike, hike, hike. You need to work off the lobster, right? What better place than Acadia National Park. There are so many to choose from and the right one can be found for all fitness levels. Try to pick one with a mountain top like Bubble Rock so you can be rewarded with a stunning view. South Bubble is pretty easy (400 feet). Read about hiking preparations here.

4.  Get out on the water! This can range a bit in expense. At the low end you can borrow our kayaks when you stay at SeaCat’s Rest. Our water is fairly protected, at the sheltered end of Frenchman Bay. There are also guided kayak trips leaving from Bar Harbor. If I were to recommend a more expensive outing I would include a whale watch trip. You will see a fair amount of open ocean and be rewarded with a close encounter with ocean leviathans! For even more options go here.

3.  Luncheon at Jordan Pond House. This is just mandatory, that’s all there is to it.  Read all about it here.

2. Bike, walk or (horseback) ride the carriage trails. This is the Rockefeller family’s  gift to America representing an ideal of pre-automobile road and stone craft set in the beauty of Acadia. Don’t miss it. More here.

1. Drive the Park Loop Road and to the top of Cadillac Mountain. This is how most people start their trip here and it is a good way. Pick a clear day for the Cadillac summit and take your camera. Don’t forget the free Island Explorer bus which can take you just about anywhere. Try to time your Thunder Hole visit to middle to high tide and good waves are a plus. This is a good time to buy your week-long park pass.

Thunder Hole on the Park Loop Road

Pieces of Maine’s foundation stone have found their way right into your vacation house in Maine   One of the very first difference in houses I found when moving to Maine was the use of granite blocks in old foundations. Curbs of stone are unique to this area where granite is abundant. What’s with all those rocks just hanging out in the woodlands? A lot of it is granite.

Granite is an interesting rock. There are three kinds of granite found on MDI island. It’s fun to find them and make a adventure out of it.

There is granite of Southwest Harbor. It is a light-colored rock, fine-grained, light gray commonly with a tan or pinkish hue. Outcrops are visible along the shore at Southwest Harbor and near West Tremont. Rock similar to Southwest Harbor granite makes up the southern end of Schoodic Peninsula and is exposed at Schoodic Point.

Granite of Cadillac Mountain is pink to greenish-gray and coarse-grained. You can see grains of translucent, gray, glassy looking quarts and pink or gray feldspar. The black mineral is hornblende. The stone forms the bald top of the mountain and much of the walking trail around the top rim is on and around that pink granite.

The granite of Somesville (above) is  fine to medium grained and pink and gray – which looks similar to Cadillac Mountain granite at first glance, but has smaller grains and a different type of feldspar. Pink or cream colored K-feldspar and light gray plagioclase will be found. The Hall Quarry supplied large quantities of building stone to many major cities with Somesville granite. You can see this stone used around seal cove as a protection against beach erosion from storms and very high tides which come four of times a year.

Deer Isle granite is the one you’ll find in our kitchen. Its pink, gray and white with black accents. It was the source of granite for New York’s major bridges, Rockefeller Center and the John F. Kennedy Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery. There are four quarry sites in and around Stonington, which was renamed for the stone industry that took over this town in the late 1800′s, Their harbor is lined with huge blocks of granite, exposed at low tide all along the town docks there. A great day side trip can be made to the only old quarry site on the main island of Deer Isle, now a nature conservancy natural area. You can walk in the quarry, and bring a lunch along for a great harbor view.

Where is the Settlement Quarry?
Take Route 15 and bear left at Deer Isle village. Keep heading toward Stonington until you see Ron’s Auto Repair on left. This is the Oceanville Road. Continue about a mile until you see the granite sign on your right.

I have always wanted to know more about the Quarry along the Penobscot River around Franklin, Maine.   Quarries along water were popular when transportation was an issue.   Boats made transporting so much easier with the heavy stone. It’ll be my next geological mystery to uncover in future posts. Still interested in granite? Visit the granite museum in Northeast Harbor. It’s closed for the winter right now but should open up again in June sometime. Stay tuned for a future post about granite sculpture project that has been going on around here for a few years now.

Reference: The Geology of Mount Desert Island, A visitor’s guide. Maine Geological Survey, Department of Conservation.

St. Sauveur site, 1613

Acadia was named “Isle des Monts-deserts” by Samuel de Champlain in 1604, and the region was known as “La Cadie”. The first settlement was in June of 1613 at the mouth of Somes Sound on a hillside called called Fernald’s Point, at a narrow passage between what is now Southwest Harbor and Northeast Harbor. Four Jesuit priests, thirty colonists and a crew of fifteen set up tents and began their work of converting Abnaki Indians. Their settlement, called St. Sauveur, lasted only a few weeks before disaster struck. A British ship from Jamestown, the Treasurer, appeared and seized the Jesuit ship and destroyed the camp, under orders to seek out and destroy all attempts at French colonization.

For the next 150 years the area was unsafe for settlement by French or English. It was administered by the French long enough for Antoine Laumet in 1688 to name the island’s tallest mountain after himself, or rather his grandiose invented name, Antoine La Mothe, Sieur de Cadillac. It was not until the end of the French and Indian War in 1759 that the British forces finally were able to establish security enough for settlement.

In 1761 Massachusetts governor Sir Francis Bernard encouraged his friend, cooper Abraham Somes to settle the Sound which now bears his name.  Soon more settlers arrived from Somes’s native Gloucester, and Somes’s barrel stave business became the island’s primary industry. Sir Francis Bernard had big plans for the island, hoping to make a killing on selling off five acre plots to land hungry settlers. Sadly for him, his pro-crown policies as governor necessitated a hasty retreat to England when the Revolutionary War started. The Somes Sound settlements however remained and prospered.

Madame de Gregoire's stone in Hulls Cove Hillside cemetery

The war resulted in a honeymoon of sorts between the new American nation and the French. Taking advantage of this was none other than the granddaughter of Antoine Laumet,  Maria Therese de la Mothe Cadillac de Gregoire. She was given the eastern half of Mt Desert Island and settled in what is now Hulls Cove in recognition for France’s help in the war.  She carried on in the tradition of Bernard, selling land to make her living. Wealthy refugees from the French Revolution helped this enterprise, and many landowners today find their property descriptions traced back to the French crown; only Louisiana can also make this claim.

Meanwhile, a similar claim on the western half of the island resulted in it being awarded to John Bernard, son of Francis. John possessed the foresight to fight for the right side in the War and thus inherited his father’s title. By 1790 the island boasted a population of 786 people and had entered an era of permanence. Farms, sawmills, smokehouses, ice harvesting and boatyards dotted the landscape; the biggest industry on Mount Desert Island however, was yet to come.

References: Maine Paradise by Russell Butcher and Marie Menzietti, Islands of Maine by Bill Caldwell, Mt. Desert Island and Acadia National Park by Sargent F. Collier.

The Islands of Maine were called upon by Europeans for many decades before the famed settlements of Jamestown and Plymouth were founded in the early 1600s. According to some speculation and fragments of evidence, the Vikings visited around 1000 years ago. Much better evidence exists for John Cabot’s visit in 1497. His descriptions of steep cliffs and dark forests dissuaded his financiers from more voyages, but served as a basis for England’s later claim to Maine. Other explorers followed. Italian Giovanni Verrazano was searching in 1524 for a passage to China and was mooned by hostile Abnaki natives. He named Monhegan, Isle au Haut and Mt. Desert islands, but not with names we now use. Spaniard Estaban Gomez named Casco Bay, Campobello Island and the Bay of Fundy.

While rumors flew about the jeweled city of Norumbega, the real wealth of Maine turned out to be fish. Arriving in the Spring, fishermen would catch and dry them in the sun on our islands. While not really settlers, the fishermen would stay for the summer, load up their ships and head back to England or France with hulls full. Their rock ballast from Europe would remain on the beaches. By 1600 there were, by some estimates 300 fishing vessels along the coast of Maine, filling Catholic Europe’s need for meatless protein. With these summer settlements came boat repair shops and early timber mills. Why then, did the first attempt at permanent settlements happen in Virginia and Massachusetts?

They didn’t! The Popham Beach settlement began in August, 1607 just a few months after Jamestown and 13 years before the Mayflower arrived, with 124 people and two ships. By September of 1608 the colonists simply gave up and went home. Few people died or starved, they just lacked the discipline, unity, religious fervor or profit motive to overcome another winter of cabin fever.  Amazingly, (I am discovering this as I write) one of the two ships was the Mary and John, the same ship which carried my 8th great grandfather Jonathan Gillett to Dorchester, Mass in 1630.

The Mary and John, the author's genetic dispersal

The Popham Beach settlement came and went with only one recorded death (George Popham) but the group did manage to build a 30 ton ship, the Virginia, before they sailed back to England. Jamestown, meanwhile lost all but 61 of their 500 colonists by 1610. The good ship Virginia made several crossings, many to supply the Jamestown colony. I will cover history specific to Acadia later. For more information about the Popham Colony go here and for info about Popham Beach State Park  go here.  Thanks to Bill Caldwell’s Islands of Maine for reference.

Acadia's bare granite, rounded and gouged by glaciers

Thirteen thousand years ago Bar Harbor was covered with a sheet of ice nearly a mile thick. As the ice melted the land rose and the ice-sculpted granite revealed itself. Two thousand years later evidence suggests the first post-glacial Paleo-Indians appeared. They hunted the giant mammals of the era until they both vanished, 9500 years ago. For the next 2000 years little human activity occurred.
Eight thousand years ago the Early Archaic Indians appeared with smaller spear tips indicating smaller animals. 4000 years later the Red Paint People arrived with a much more advanced culture. They went out of their way to obtain red ochre from near Mt. Katahdin to bury with their dead and had large stone chisels which they used to make ocean-going dugout boats. Thus came Maine’s first fishing people, thirty-six centuries before Europeans made landfall. Red Paint settlement excavations yield large swordfish skeletons, a fish only found in 1000 feet of water.

Eroded shore shows shell fragments from middens

Did the first European explorers encounter Red Paint People? No. There was another thousand year gap before the “Ceramic Group” appeared. Named for their use of pottery, their presence was more or less continuous until the familiar tribes were recognized. Evidence exists of these people within a few hundred feet of SeaCat’s Rest. They gathered near the shore by stream outlets and dug clams and managed fish traps during the summer months. Huge deposits of shells piled up called “midden piles” near their encampments, one of which is two doors down.

FDR's birch bark canoe

These modern Indians fashioned the famed birch-bark canoes now copied by Old Town Canoe Co. They also planted gardens and grew corn, beans and squash, using tools of shell and bone. Their lifestyle was only semi-nomadic, with regular summer and winter villages. In November they headed upriver to hunt in the forests.

European explorers describe two principle nations, the fierce Micmacs and the more passive Abnakis. Abnakis were in turn made up of the Passamaquoddy, Penobscot and Wawenocks and were the coastal tribes most encountered by Europeans. Early encounters by the two groups were quite friendly and positive reports were written by Captain George Weymouth and journalist James Rosier in 1605. Praise for their tobacco, dress, written language, homes and fishing methods flowed back to England.

In the next hundred years hostilities and acquired diseases decimated the native populations. In the 1970′s the Maine tribes sued the government and received 350,000 acres and $81.5 million. Today there are many in Maine who proudly celebrate their native heritage. I recently found out that one of my great great great great grandmothers was an Iroquois Indian, so I am 1/64 Native American, blue eyes notwithstanding.

References used: Islands of Maine by Bill Caldwell, Manitou and Providence by Neal Salisbury

This is one of the first signs visitors see as they cross the Piscataqua River from New Hampshire on the turnpike. It looks like an outright boast, but is it? What are we talking about anyway? Ask any Mainer what is meant by this claim and you will get a different answer.  Some will talk about the outdoor lifestyle; fishing, farming, or working in the woods. Some will bring up the scenery that is never in short supply. Some will equate the lifestyle with the winter experience and the special feeling of living just a little closer to the edge of survival. Many who move here find it romantic to find themselves a mile from the nearest plowed road in the winter. In a few years the same folks become weary of the struggle and head for home.

To me, “the way life should be” means to preserve the good stuff. This is the first place I’ve lived in which the rate of commercial development is balanced by the return of old buildings into the earth. Where abandoned ramshackle houses are allowed to slowly settle into a pile of boards. Where all that remains of cleared farmland is a rock wall surrounding a forest. I can’t quite explain why this is a comfort to me. Maybe I like to think that other places may cleanse themselves like this some day.

The phrase also speaks to our way of getting along; the easy combination of respecting privacy and looking out for one another. Leaving doors unlocked, going to town meeting where citizens vote for the yearly budget by arguing for hours and then holding up colored cards while the town manager counts . Our antiquated democracy where we are represented by “Selectman and Overseer of the Poor”. How cool is that?

Yet Maine is not without problems. We don’t value education enough. Our public colleges are inadequate. Many people are poor and isolated. But maybe that’s why the forces of development and growth have passed us by, why the old buildings are allowed to tumble into the ground, and why this recession in Maine is not the shocker it is elsewhere. We make do, we can always dig a few clams, cut our own firewood and spin a yarn or two. When civilization crumbles Mainers stand a better chance of surviving. It’s all about renewal. I can say this no better than Bill Caldwell, author of Islands of Maine:

Stand on a Maine island alone and feel the awesome glory of rock, soil sky, sea. On a peacock day in summer, these islands, more than most places on earth, can give world-strained mankind the healing balm of natural peace.

Thinking back on my childhood, I loved that we spent a week in one nice spot. Renting a vacation home can create family memories, enable you to spend quality relaxing time together as a family. Cooking together for me enables a family to provide a merging of home life with vacation excitement, just what the kids need.

Many folks don’t think about cooking on vacation, but it is key to making your children feel at home in a strange new environment. Our family created four memory filled vacations by renting places with a home-like environment and spending time exploring the surrounding area. Cooking one or two meals together gave the adults a chance to explore the new and unusual foods, but gave our children the security of knowing that if they wanted their normal food, it was available to them. Also at our place, you get privacy and your own out-door space to enjoy the fresh air, water and woods all around. A picnic in your door yard, as they say in Maine.

Eric Clapton's Chelsea Residence

It also stretched our dollar further, enabling us to stay longer. We stepped into urban shoes in London, renting a flat in a nice building in a beautiful area a few blocks from Eric Clapton’s house. We were entertained just by walking around the streets by the history and pace of a large city. We spent days in museums and loved the theatre excitment. Being able to get around with mass transit was a nice difference to our rural lifestyle.

Going to a wedding, we spent a week on a small lake in rural Michigan – and created a stable place for my aging father who never likes to travel. Having his own room where he could walk out and mingle with all the kids and their kids’ kids. We were able to have a barbecue and eating became a celebration in itself. The small kids spent endless time exploring the shore and water. We got a house large enough for 4 groups to stay together.

Granada from Alhambra

We spent a week exploring southern Spain, staying in a condominium.  I have to say, because it was the cool season, we really only used the place at the start and end of our day, spending the rest of the time driving through the surrounding area.  We explored some incredible historical cities, ruins and Alhambra. Driving in Spain was an adventure. We were able to visit the Picasso museum in Malaga, something not easy to forget. Cooking with local food was an adventure too. It enabled us to sample local cheeses and thrive despite the local custom of eating dinner after 10pm, our usual bedtime….those Spaniards!

We spent anther wedding week in southern California, LA land. Staying in a house where again three families were under one roof. We were able to host the rehearsal dinner party there, around our own pool. I have to say that getting around on the highways was a bit challenging for this rural resident.

So keep looking at renting a house for vacation this time. The best part is accommodating a group size of your choosing, whether it is a family of 4 or a family gathering of 16. Vacation memories await you.  If you need a two bedroom suite on the ocean, please consider our SeaCat’s Rest.

One of the first questions that many folks coming to Maine for a visit ask is, how do folks make a living here? The state of Maine doesn’t have a single large economic engine that drives our economy. We do have some historical industries, but lately those are in decline or have disappeared. Currently the most talked about is the rise of our “creative economy”.

Now this in typical Maine fashion has at least three meanings. The first meaning is that folks living in Maine create artistic products and make a living that way – artists in paint, photography, writers of books and poetry, potters, sculptors, boat builders.   Creating art – something beautiful to look at of some sort.     Evidence of this economy can be found at the Maine Craft Center, and the many craft and art shows around the state in the summertime. Here is an example of an organized effort – 2009 conference- to help us stir up this interesting pot of artistic power.   here is a you tube link   JUICE Community The arts experience

Connect, Collaborate, Create: The Juice Conference connects leaders of the creative economy to foster growth and prosperity. Weaving together the arts, technology, and entrepreneurship, Juice inspires innovation by bringing talented people together from widely different backgrounds to build on Maine’s traditions. Juice is a forum where attendees can learn, exchange ideas, share success stories and provide input to shape the development of strategies for Maine’s future.

I agree that having a strong arts community is beneficial for attracting visitors to Maine, or at least making their vacation much more interesting – take a beautiful setting, input art and you have 1+1 making more than just 2.

The second meaning is that Maine people use creative ways to put together two or three jobs to create an income year round for themselves. This means taking small jobs like making Christmas wreaths, harvesting seasonal wild food or fishing for a short season, working for the tourist industry either in summer or winter, cutting wood in the winter – depending on where in Maine you live.

The third meaning (a derivative of the second) that you create your own job and your own way of making a product or a service. This is a growing group of folks that farm, or make products that come from animals or natural resources. A great business that shows initiative in the third way is barkwheats. I think that the recent success of Maine’s many organic farms is another great example. Leading the way for these creative small businesses is the MOFGA organization one of the largest in the United States. Making snowshoes, creating a jam and jelly business, weaving blankets from home-grown wool. Knitting sweaters, but also raising the wool.

Historically there have been three power house economic engines that drove Maine’s economy. The first was our lumber resources, first being used for building materials – house lumber, ship lumber, furniture lumber, and lately paper products from fast growing trees. Large towns on big rivers grew up on this money engine. However, these days the paper companies are investing in new equipment elsewhere in the world. Plus the demand for paper and paper products is shrinking as we rely more on internet communication. Gone is the day when you only purchased your seeds from a seed catalog, now we often go on-line and go from there. The second large industry in Maine was shoe manufacturing – again, our rivers provided many of the power needs for this industry. The third and the one still clinging to a place in our current economy is the fishing industries and it’s sister boat building and sailing.

Maine still has it’s boat building industry, although it ebbs and flows a bit as the economy goes up and down. Large boats are only built in one place, Bath, Maine at this point. Smaller ships are still being built in and around here and all along the coast and maintained here too.

Fishing and clamming or worming are living occupations of my neighbors still, but it is morphing and changing in response to the environmental challenges that are ringing the planet. Carpenters here in Maine are home grown in the most part, fathers passing on the skills and the business to their sons and friends. Boat building remains a cornerstone of the Maine economy, with small shops throughout the coast tucked away off side streets. Manset and Southwest Harbor have five thriving boat building businesses. Here in Lamoine, I can see evidence of three home businesses where boats are built.