I loved getting from New York to Maine. (Admittedly…I wasn't driving. I always offer, but Sam usually just does it all and it's probably a good thing, because I fall asleep SO easily, I am always fighting it when I drive. I'm grateful he's willing to do it!) So I did drift off a lot during this trip and it was a long drive. But everything I was awake for was absolutely beautiful. It made me want to come back to Vermont and New Hampshire someday! Such cute little towns! Such breathtaking mountain roads! We were on small roads the whole time and I'm not sure if we were taking some scenic route or if ALL the roads are like that!
Most of these pictures are faded and blotchy taken through car windows. I couldn't make us stop for me to look at every pretty view when we had so far to go! But at least this preserves some memory of it. I loved the low-hanging clouds in the morning when we left.
There was misty rain off and on during the day, which seemed right.
We had to stop for road work in a couple places, which gave me a chance to finally take a picture of the flowers that were everywhere along the side of the road. They were so pretty—Queen Anne's lace and Black-eyed Susan and cornflower, it looked like. No daisies like in Oregon, but just as pretty. I wonder if there are flowers blooming all summer or if we just got lucky to be there at the right time?
I didn't expect it to be so mountainous along the drive. Although literally the only thing I know about Vermont from school is "the Green Mountain boys" who came from Vermont to fight in the Revolutionary War. Led by… Ethan something…ugh, I tried to remember it on the entire drive through Vermont and I never did. I will now look it up and set my mind at rest. ……………ah! Ethan Allan! Of course.
The whole reason we even got to go to Maine was that my friend Andrea moved there a few years ago. We've talked dreamily about my family coming to visit her family, but of course I never thought it would actually happen. It's way too far for us to drive on a regular vacation—it would TAKE the whole vacation just to get there! I thought maybe when I was older and richer I'd fly out and see her by myself, because the pictures she sent were always SO beautiful.
For a while when we were planning the sabbatical we thought we might try to live in Maine ourselves. Andrea has a friend with a rental house on Airbnb and I talked with her about it a little. We ended up deciding on Quebec, but I still wanted to swing by Maine on the way! Then it turned out that Andrea would be back in Utah for a family reunion all through July and I was so sad! And then she said we'd be doing her a favor if we came and stayed in her house and took care of the animals while she was gone! That was not QUITE as good as a real visit, but it made it possible for us to see Maine and even to stay for almost a week. So that was amazing. We got to visit Acadia National Park and the Fox Islands, where one of my ancestors served a mission in the early days of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Andrea and her family (she and Timothy have eight kids—the oldest girl is Abe's age, and she's married now with two kids of her own! So crazy!) live in a little township in sort of the lower middle of the state. The town nearby is Farmington (which is the name of a city in every state, I feel like. Utah has one. And we stayed in one in Iowa!). Her driveway was a little dirt turnoff and we were not sure we were in the right place at first!
But then I recognized her beautiful trees. I have seen pictures of these trees!
The super nice neighbor boy was there when we arrived, to introduce us to the dogs. Three dogs: Maple, Hondo, and Taffy. And he showed us how to feed the chickens and ducks, and how to take care of the kitten. That was so fun for us! We haven't ever had so many animals before!
We were so happy to be staying somewhere for a few days so we could actually unpack and do laundry and rest a while! We made ourselves right at home. But it felt strange to be living in someone's house. Rental houses just aren't quite the same. I was worried that the kids would ruin something or I'd inadvertently leave something messy that she always keeps spotlessly clean. I hope I didn't, Andrea!
I love her library. We read many, many of these books while we were here. I myself was pleased to find Lloyd Alexander's Janine is French, which Andrea has been telling me to read for ages but it's out of print and costs a million dollars to buy used ($500 on Amazon right now, to be precise), and read it over a couple days. It was so good! And don't worry, I put it right back on the shelf where it belongs!
Such a happy, friendly, welcoming house. Colorful. Full of Andrea-ish personality. It felt like such a haven of rest for us, weary travelers that we were! We spent a couple days just completely at the house: Ziggy playing with the dogs, kids playing outside with the chickens, sitting inside reading and listening to the rain, Malachi pretending not to like the cat as he sat petting her while he read his book. It was wonderful.
We went to a beautiful waterfall, Smalls Falls (Sam disapproved of that name). It was a hot day and people were swimming and playing in the water, and it looked so fun!
It is a series of about four waterfalls with little pools at the bottom of each one. You can easily scramble up the mossy, rocky trail alongside them to see each different part. So beautiful!
It occurs to me that someone might wonder why Ziggy is wearing a police officer uniform. I don't even think about it anymore. It's just one of the things he wears.
Clementine suddenly started insisting, during the little hike, that she must walk along with her hands in her pockets. No matter how many times we tried to get her to hold our hands instead, she would yank her hand away and put it back in her pocket. You can see she is keeping at least one hand there in this picture. I remember when little Goldie went through a hands-in-pockets stage too, and was just as stubborn about it! It makes hiking with them very difficult!
I love the green leaf-light in the stream
Pockets again.
And still!
The property around Andrea's house is so green and beautiful. They had a lot of flooding last year, so I know the rain and water isn't ALL good, but everything just seems so abundant and alive to me in these green places. I love it. It was fun to see the little creek and the chicken house and the shed and other things I've heard Andrea talk about. If we lived here we would need BOOTS for everything like Andrea's family has! So much mud!
I like the tip of Maple's tail in this picture (or is it Hondo's?). We were playing with the dogs and they were so happy to be running around! Landon, the neighbor boy, said Hondo had just been sitting sadly in his crate for a couple days before we came, and wouldn't come out or eat much. He must have been missing his family and all the noise and bustle? But he seemed to perk right up when we came, and ran and barked so joyously as he played with the kids every day that it made me feel we were doing SOMETHING good at least. (I'm sure the dogs would have been happy with anyone, but it was flattering to feel liked by them all the same.)
They were gentle, friendly dogs (Andrea tells me that's the hallmark of English Shepherds—they like kids) and pretty obedient too. They usually came when we called them. After the first couple minutes where he was apprehensive because the dogs were so big, Ziggy bossed them around SO much. Way too much, really. I kept telling him, "Zig, let them just do what they want sometimes!" But he also played with them all day long, so maybe it balanced out. He pretended they were his Police Dogs. It was so cute!!
Hondo was really the best of the dogs. I think we all agreed on that.
I just love this little woods out the back window of the house. I think I took pictures of it every day because it looked so pretty in every different light!
Malachi pretended not to like the dogs or any of the animals, but they liked HIM and I saw him surreptitiously petting them quite frequently. :)
The kitten was gone when we first arrived. I think there were two originally, even. Landon said they had been stray cats before, so maybe they just left and went wild again when Andrea's family left. He thought their mother was probably helping them. But then one of them came back (her name was Tizzy) and everyone was so happy! She was the cutest little tiny thing! She liked being held and would sit contentedly on someone's lap for an hour or more, purring. She was supposed to stay in the garage, but when we were home she was almost always being held or cuddled by someone!
Including Malachi the grumpy animal-hater! :) (Although he has admitted before to liking cats. And of course he likes bunnies!)
Note the kitty curled up on Goldie!
Daisy, Tizzy, and the Book of Mormon Sam bought in Palmyra
The baby chickens lived in a different coop than the adult chickens. We let the big ones out to free-range every other day, but the little ones had to go in their little…chicken tractor, I think Andrea called it. So we had to carry them over from their coop and put them into that every day. All the kids helped and it meant there was a Chicken Parade every morning and evening as they carried the chickens (and two ducks. Let us not forget the two ducks.) Gus was, surprisingly, the most enthusiastic and capable chicken handler of them all. He would seize a chicken around the middle and just trot along through the yard with it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He wasn't fazed by flapping or clucking, but just happily continued on his way until dropping them off in their chicken tractor. I thought he looked SO funny and cute carrying chickens! I took a million pictures of him.
And Gus loved those soft little chickens! It made me wish we had chickens! One of the days, he reached up and held Sam’s hand (which was gloved) and said confidingly, “I like holding your hand like this. It feels like it has chickens on it.”
The tiny black ones were everyone's favorites.
Nighttime chicken parade—after Acadia National Park
Gus and that good dog Hondo
We did explore the area around Andrea's house a bit. This was a pretty lake nearby.
All the hills were covered with green like this.
And I never knew what direction we were driving because all the roads looked exactly like this.
Pretty yellow field
Daisy and I discovered this little trail when we went in to Farmington to get groceries. We walked down it a little way and found a little stream, and then a river!
This could not be more beautiful!
There were quite a few run-down houses like this one. It reminded me a little of what we saw when we visited Arkansas with Abe earlier this year. Maybe lots of people are leaving Maine when there aren't enough jobs or something?
There is a great ward there, though. I played the organ and we did a musical number the Sunday we visited, because Andrea is the ward music coordinator and made us do it! The people in the ward were really friendly and nice. It was fun to visit.
Junie did Goldie's hair in very fancy braids for church!
There was something beautiful to look at in every direction!
Sam and I tried to find a place to eat for our date night, and Google reviews led us to a place called "White Fox" that sounded good. We followed GPS directions which led us to…this. A poor smashed food truck! Sad! It must have happened recently because there were reviews dated only a couple weeks earlier. :(
But I got to eat some really good salmon at another place, so it turned out fine.
We found this dog driving a car at the grocery store. :)
This is the view that meant we were almost home. Andrea's house is somewhere in the middle of those dark trees in the foreground.
I love this driveway leading to the house!
Andrea's husband Timothy came home a couple weeks before the rest of the family, and he was such a good sport to let us intrude on his peace for one more night when I'm sure all he wanted was rest and quiet and not a herd of wild hyenas inhabiting HIS house. We tried to get up soooo quietly and pack and up and go in the morning. The dogs seemed sad to see us go!
We said goodbye to them, and to the kitten Tizzy.
One more chicken parade.
And then we were off.
The dogs ran along with our car as we drove out, barking and barking. I think they were going to miss us!
And that was the end of our getting-to-Quebec trip…and the beginning of our real Quebec sabbatical. It is only about four hours from Maine to Quebec City. It was a beautiful, beautiful drive.
We were nervous and excited for what came next!
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