In the morning, Brian, Laura and I took a plane to Southern California to see my family. Earlier this week, my mom turned ninety years old, so we are gathering at to celebrate with High Tea.

What a wonderful party! Around fifty people came, and we talked and laughed. David bought a bunch of hats for the ladies, so we would be proper, you know. Fred and Kam took tons of photographs. I didn’t take any. 

Later, we went to Grandma Marie’s house for some quiet time with my mom, my brother and my brother’s wife. A lovely end to the day.

We picked up Laura at the airport this morning, then went to Stanford University, Pat’s Alma Mater and where she volunteered after she retired from San Jose Unified School District. We saw the museum which houses the Anderson Collection of modern American art.

Three generations of Marshalls under a giant Yucca tree in front of the museum.

The museum housed an interesting collection.

We toured for a while, with Laura taking notes on the artwork.

In the evening, we went to Brian’s brother’s house and had a wonderful time telling and listening to stories, playing cards and looking at slides from their recent trip to the San Juan Islands. We were so busy, I forgot to take pictures!

We got up at 4:15 AM in Portland Maine. We had a three hour layover in Baltimore Maryland. We arrived in Oakland, CA, then took BART to see Brian’s mom in San Jose.

Eleven hours of airplanes and airports. Ugh? Or Yeah! ?  Depends on you. We like to walk every available concourse, end to end or until we get tired. We look for observation decks and kids play areas. And we write in blogs! On board, we sometimes play cribbage on the iPad.

This is what a normal day’s flight paths over the U.S. look like, from a display in the observation area at the Baltimore airport:

Observations about New England.

There’s a Dunkin’ Donuts in every town, like Starbucks in the west. 

Even though the area is called “New England”, most people drink coffee, not tea.

The coastline is an intricate mix of land and water, salt and fresh, trees and rocks. If we lived here, we would want to learn how to use boats of all kinds. We would probably not do more swimming, because the water is too cold, at least the ocean water.

Seasons are important. Although we were only there for a short while, we noticed artwork depicting seasons in many places we visited. It seemed you could not last long if you were not aware of the seasons. Entire towns close. We often  Winters must be really harsh in Maine.

Private land dominates. We couldn’t find places to hike except in rare parks. Walking around on Deer Island was dangerous, because cars went by so fast.

In the cities, people come in every color and wear all kinds of clothes. In rural areas, people are mostly white skinned. Dress is much more casual and uniform, like gardening (or fishing?) clothes.

Driving seems a competitive sport here. Maine drivers pay no attention to speed limits. In Connecticut, drivers are impatient, darting between lanes and trying to pass everyone. And they are never going over the speed limit because there is too much traffic.

Maine is known as the Pine Tree State. The percentage of conifers was a lot higher than in Connecticut or New Hampshire. 

Lobster was in season, so we indulged.  We also ate crab and scallops. Great proteins here, but vegetables were rare. Perhaps people eat their veggies all at home and don’t want them when dining out? Lettuce and tomatoes were about it unless you ordered special side vegetables. 

So, off to California, a six hour flight. Grandma Pat picked us up at the BART station closest to her house. Her she is with her son Brian in her back yard.

Here is the room we stayed in for the past two nights on Deer Island.

Funky beams, eh?

We did not explore Deer Island much yesterday, because we needed the whole day for Acadia National Park. Although Deer Island is almost as large as yesterday’s island, it is completely private, so exploration is limited.  Fortunately, the B&B owned land, so here is the pond behind it:

Ponds, that is lakes without water flowing in or out of them, are common in the islands around Penobscot Bay. It took me a while to figure that out. They are glacially scoured low spots where rain water accumulates. The drinking water is delicious.

This morning, the tide was out, so we went across the street to the tidal flats.

Then we drove around Deer Island looking for places in the McCloskey books. We found a sandy beach and waded into the very cold water.

The water was super clear, super cold, and the seaweed had no insects nor smell, to our surprise. Perhaps the water temperature? There were a few jellyfish. This was about ten inches in diameter.

Later we drove back to the mainland to see Buck’s Harbor, mentioned in one of McCloskey’s books. 

Our next point of interest was the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden in the town of Boothbay. We found we could not resist their motto:

Could you?

I enjoyed the pumpkin exhibit:

Brian took visually interesting photos:

And we found displays in honor of McCloskey’s books:

This one is from Blueberries for Sal, with the bear family.

Brian took excellent photographs of all the foliage:

and a local native:

We closed the place down (they closed at 5:00). 

Then off to Portland, to stay near the airport for our cross country trip to San Jose, California tomorrow. 

Goodbye Maine and New England. It was a brief but fun visit.