The Maine event....

 This year our family took a beautiful 10 day vacation to the northern coast of Maine.

 We rented a small ocean front cottage in the fishing village of Corea.

 The trip was wonderful and I could write about it for a long time, but I will just try to cover a few of the basics in this posting. I will let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

 I am posting 100 pictures from the trip ... we took almost 500.

 Although the scenery was absolutely stunning, these pictures are mostly all of Sequoia as she was a phenomenal traveler on this trip.

 The cottage was completely private and had a spectacular 180 degree unobstructed view of the water and surrounding islands.

 Every morning, shortly after sunrise (at 4:45) Sequoia would walk into our room and wake us up by saying she loved us.

 At that point she and I would go out front and climb all over the rocks looking to add to her collection of sea shells. After that we would go back inside to organize the collection and make a relaxed breakfast and enjoy the peacefulness of the setting.

 We spent a bit of time driving around exploring the beauty of Acadia National Park.

 Sequoia proved that she is a very capable and accomplished hiker.

 She loved her "blue dot trails". The blue dots refer to the blue painted blazes that marked the trails. She quickly became very adept at following the trails and led us most of the time.

 She was also good at locating and following the rock cairns that marked the paths along the rocky parts.

 Sequoia exhibited great rock scrambling ability, a skill she used on the rocky trails and along the coast while tide pooling and shell collecting.

 Here is a lobster shaped pancake I made for her....my masterpiece.

 Some of her many shells. it was fun to watch her organize them by shape and size and color.

 Every day we added to the collection.

 It was fun watching the lobster boats work their traps in front of the house.

 Acadia's Schoodic Head Peninsula was only 5 miles from our house and offered beautiful tide pooling opportunities as well as great hikes.

 The picture above is of one of the many fairy houses we built while we were there. This one is on Blueberry Hill.

 A highlight of the trip was our stop at the very small and visually unimpressive "oceanarium" on Mount Desert Island. We wanted to see it because it has a lobster hatchery there.

 It turned out to be a great stop and one of my favorite memories from the trip.

 We sat through an amazingly wonderful talk with a retired lobster man who had a great way with kids. Sequoia had so much fun there ... even getting up to sit on his lap and sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star while he played his harmonica.

 She really got a kick out of getting dressed up in the over sized Southwester and boots.

 These shots are simply pure joy.

 Here is Colleen and Sequoia at the beach at the end of another hike. They are sitting next to a very elaborate fairy castle that Sequoia built.

 We spent a fair amount of time just relaxing at the house, and with this view, why wouldn't we?

 But of course there is so much to do up there, we never sat still for long...and came home thoroughly exhausted because of that.

 We all enjoyed our boat ride out to see the seals and lobsters.

 Sequoia's personality was in full bloom during this trip.

 We asked a lot of her, from the 13 hour car ride each way, to sleeping in a strange room all by herself, to long hours every day (5 am to 10 pm) that covered many things that are plain boring for little 3 year olds, to long hikes and many meals out in restaurants, to well, just a very busy and tiring schedule with a lot of stimulation for a little girl to absorb.

 She handled it all with grace, charm and humor.

 I constantly had to remind myself that she was only 3.

 One thing I can say that really made us happy was that, although the house had satellite TV, we never once turned it on. Better yet, Sequoia never once asked to watch TV.

 In the picture above, she is touching a small butterfly that she found in the yard.

 Our family portrait on the rocks in front of the house.

It proved to be challenging to run across the rocks fast enough to beat the timer.

 We were definitely in the land of lobsters.

 And took advantage of the chance to get a picture of our own little lobster Newberg.

 This series of pictures is very typical of the whole vacation.

 We thoroughly enjoyed Bar Harbor's beautiful town park and found ourselves relaxing there after dinner a few times.

 One night we thought we would play some miniature golf as a release for Sequoia's 3 year old personality.

 We finally found something that she is not very good at....but I know she will figure it out.

 But anyway, back at Bar Harbor's town park, Colleen taught Sequoia how to log roll down a hill.

 Her enthusiasm made up for her technique.

 Here are two pictures of mommy, taken by Sequoia.

 Gram Mom might appreciate the finger in the picture as there is a 3 year period of my childhood that includes Gram Mom's finger in every picture.

 And who can go to Maine without getting some Blue Berry Ice Cream?

 On the drive home we needed to stretch our legs, so we stopped at LL Bean to see their main store.

 The mud puddles were the best part of that stop.

 

Anyway, we thoroughly enjoyed our trip and were sad to pack up and head home. We took it easy and drove slowly down the coast as we were reluctant to say goodbye.