Vacation is Over

Vacation is over :(

I'll post a San Francisco and a Los Angeles entry soon.

It's been a good five weeks even though the weather in Maine has sucked pretty much the whole time. Fortunately the last week was spent in sunny California so it felt like I got a taste of summer, especially given the 100+ degree temps.

The first few days I spent alone at camp. I had hoped to kayak and spend some time in the yard and in my hammock swing, reading in the sun, but it rained steady the whole time so I was relegated to reading inside and other indoor activities. It started out fine but by about the fourth day I became pretty depressed and went home. Our plans were to go to Popham Beach the following week and I was in kind of a panic about having to spend over a thousand dollars to spend seven days in a one room cottage while it rained all week as all the weather reports were predicting. I actually went on line and tried to find someplace we could go that was predicting sun and the closest I could find was Pennsylvania. In fact, the town where Rick used to live and where he makes regular visits to see his mom, was predicting sunny weather all week so I tried to convince him to blow off Popham and go PA. Definitely not a comparable vacation – the seashore vs. a small town with not much going on – but I was so desperate for some sun at that point I didn't really care where I was as long as it was sunny. I hadn't realized how adversely a lack of sun affected me until then, but crying all the way home from camp at the prospect of another week of rain made me realize I needed to do something drastic. Fortunately, as it turned out, Rick wasn't buying the last minute change of plans. He tried to placate me with the option of going to Popham and if it really sucked, we'd leave and go to PA. Fine. I agreed to give it a try. And it turned out we had 5 beautiful sunny days out of the seven. Not bad at all. Even the two rainy days were nice, sitting inside reading, watching and listening to the waves.

When we returned from Popham we had just two nights at home before we headed up to the Stratton/Eustis area to howl with the wolves. See post on that. Of course it drizzled rain most of the time we were there.

After that we came home for a couple of days during which it was cloudy and drizzly, and got ready to go to White's Beach Bluegrass Festival that weekend. We spent Friday and Saturday there with some sun, and then headed home early Sunday, which turned out to be a beautiful day, in order to get in our first kayak paddle of my vacation. (Well, except for the half hour paddle at Popham). It felt so good to be out there paddling in the sun. Rick went home and I spent Sunday night alone at camp, went kayaking again on Monday, and invited Betty out to spend the night Monday night. She and I kayaked again on Tuesday and then I went home and she spent that night alone at camp. I needed to leave so as to get ready for our California trip.

So Thursday morning we left for California, returning the following Thursday, late in the evening. That left just Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (today) before returning to work. I think the fast pace of our California explorations must have worn me down because I got hit with a nasty cold on our last day there and spent my first two days back home feeling miserable and sleeping. I woke up this morning feeling fine and got up early and went for a walk around the neighborhood. It's been mostly overcast all day but it hasn't actually rained.

So I just check weather.com and see that seven out of the next ten days are predicting mostly sun. Fuckers.