Productive weekend!

Saturday wasn't all that productive. I went to a scrapbook convention, about an hour away. I spent an hour there and came home empty-handed. Ok, so it's good for my bank account that I came home empty handed, but it still cost me $7 to get in and $3 to park. Not to mention the 2 hours of driving. Blech. I just haven't been scrapping much, so nothing really jumped out at me as a "must buy".

When I came home I was feeling a bit tired so I took a nap for a bit. Then after dinner we watched Back to the Future II. Did you know that in 5 years we're supposed to have flying cars? Somehow I don't think the technology will be advancing that quickly.

Sunday was a bit more busy. We woke up kind of early and went for a bike ride. We live very close to a bike path, but this is the first time we've been out there (other than a short walk a month or so ago). The problem was that when we moved we had a washer and dryer in the shed blocking our bikes. We were planning to sell them, but I don't think either of us was really all that motivated to actually place an ad and deal with calls. Then in January I found a charity that would take them. But in January there was snow between the shed and the driveway. And then I got pregnant and could no longer lift heavy things. Finally last weekend my dad came over and helped load them into Chris' truck. The shed seems so much more spacious now!

So the nice thing is that at 9am on a Sunday there aren't too many people out on the bike path. And it also was pretty cool. Right now (at 2:20) it's about 83 degrees. The bad thing is that it was mostly downhill going away from the house which means you really have to work to get home. We went about 4 miles (turns out we almost were at the end) and then it started sprinkling so we headed back. Plus we didn't know how much further it went and I knew we had the hills on the return.

When we got home I did a bit of gardening. Watered my strawberries, rhubarb, and asparagus. 4 of the 5 rows of asparagus are looking good. Hopefully the other one is just taking a little longer. Something had dug up one of my strawberry plants, but I put it back in. And I guess I'm not too concerned. Strawberries send off runners with new plants, so if that one doesn't make it, I can always replace it with one of the runners.

When I planted the rhubarb one had looked much better than the other, but now the runty one is looking ok. Hopefully next year I'll be able to make a strawberry-rhubarb pie with fruit from my garden!

I also did a bit of transplanting and planting of other seeds. Not sure if they'll make it- may be too early, but this super nice weather gets me itching to plant. I transplanted some scallions and mesclun, and planted seeds for some carrots, more scallions, a row of corn, and a nasturtium. The corn is the only one I'm really thinking might be too early. The seed packed says "after all danger of frost" but I also had read something that said it was ok to plant when oak leaves are as big as a squirrel's ear. I have plenty of seeds though, so if it is too early I can always replant.

Now I'm off to my mom's to pay her bills. And then maybe a stop at the grocery store on the way home. And if it's cooled off at all when I get back, I may do a bit more gardening- need to prune the rose bushes and pick up some leaves and sticks from the front flower beds.

Active Weekend

So skating has been a lot of fun lately. Although my waltz jump is still really sucky, my teacher has realized that I'm better than the other students on other things. So last weekend she taught me to do a spread eagle, and then yesterday she had me doing a lunge and a 3-turn simultaneously. Yeah, not so easy. And I was doing so many lunges that I'm in a bit of pain today.

But then since the weather has been so nice (upper 50s, low 60s) Chris and I went for a bike ride today. Only about 6 miles, but that was enough. I don't think we've been on our bikes since we went to Acadia back in August.

Too bad tomorrow it's supposed to snow. I guess we're back to winter for a bit longer. too bad the garden didn't get that memo. I've got bulbs popping up all over the place.

A summary of my time in Acadia

It has been mentioned that I have been back from vacation for two weeks now and I still haven't updated my blog.

I guess I'm just overwhelmed. I took about 380 photos, and I have no idea how to narrow it down. Also, most of those pictures are of landscapes and granite carriage road bridges- not exactly the most exciting to the viewer/reader.

So here's a really lame summary:

Saturday- headed up to Acadia. We stopped along the way in Freeport to go to the Maine Highland Games. It was kind of interesting. We didn't stick around for too long as we still had a few more hours of driving, but we heard some bagpipes and watched some athletics. We both agreed that we wished there had been commentary during the sports as we really didn't know what we were watching or what the point was of it.
Got to the campground in the late afternoon, set up, made dinner, and then went to one of the evening ranger programs. I remember going to these all the time when I was a kid. It was kind of interesting, but we were cold, so we left a bit early to go back to the site to put on warmer clothing.

Sunday- decided to climb Cadillac Mountain. Cadillac really kicked my butt. And my knee. For the past 5+ years I've had a knee that hurts when I go hiking. It was fine on the way up, but the hike down sucked! Then even walking around camp really hurt.

Monday- woke up with my knee still hurting. Going for another hike was not going to be an option. However, it turns out that biking wasn't causing me pain, so we decided to hit the carriage roads for a bit. Went for about 9 miles.


By the evening my knee was feeling a bit better, so we went for a walk around Bar Harbor and did a little bit of shopping. However, both the yarn store and the scrapbook store were closed, so we'll have to come back. :)

Tuesday- we had planned to go for another bike ride, but on our way out it started to rain. Blech. Change in plans. Instead we went into Bar Harbor so I could go to the yarn store and the scrapbooking store. Yes, these are important things to do. Found a cafe where we could get online for a bit, so at least we were out of the rain and we got an internet fix for an hour or two. We then headed back to camp for reading and napping. I guess doing nothing all day is tiring. :)
In the evening it was time to go back to Bar Harbor so that we could go to Bar Island. We had looked at the tide schedule for the week and figured that this would be the best day to go. The rain had stopped, so we decided to go ahead with our plans. Then it was time for dinner in town. We were actually pretty good during this vacation with not spending lots of money at restaurants.

Wednesday- Time for another bike ride! We started off doing a loop that was about 8 miles, and then decided to do another 5 miles after that. And as if that wasn't enough exercise, we went for a hike.

This time we decided to hike the North and South Bubbles. Both of these are really short hikes, but they are a tad steep so are fairly strenuous. We did lengthen the hike a bit by coming down an alternate route. And we're very glad that we didn't climb up that way- lots of bouldering.

Thursday- Started the morning off with a carriage ride. The driver wasn't the best, but it was still a pleasant time. While we were out we even passed by one of the Rockefellers. Nice to see that they still make it up to the island.
After the carriage ride we went for more biking. It was our goal to see all of the bridges, and there were some we hadn't seen yet. Guess we overdid it a bit the day before- we were exhausted! We had thought about doing another hike, but we just didn't have it in us. We were beat. We did go over to Thunder Hole, but got there at the wrong time so it wasn't that exciting.

Just a random photo here of our dinner. This is pizza crust, cooked on the campfire. Looks like a certain country, huh?





Friday- Time for another hike. This time it was the Beehive. It was here that I discovered that I kind of have a fear of heights. Well, make that a fear of cliffs. I realized I'm ok with heights when on balconies, roller coasters, or other places where I am more or less secure, but on the ride of a cliff? Yeah, not so much my thing. I was very glad when we got to the top! We came down via a different route, but we had planned to do that anyway. When we got to the bottom and saw how many people were climbing the Beehive, we were glad we had gone earlier so that we would be able to go at our own pace.
After our hike we headed back to Thunder Hole. The tide was coming in, so it was supposed to be getting to its "peak" time. The waves were certainly better, but still nto that impressive. We decided it's probably best during a storm. We asked some ranger sand they agreed. One of them even commented that he had come out in a hurricane and it was fabulous!
We then stopped at the beach just long enough for me to run in and get wet. Beaches just aren't Chris' thing. At this point I was tired and wanted to go back to camp, but figured I had to at least go in, so I did and then we went back to camp.


Saturday- Time to head home. It was great not having to take down and set up camp every night like we did last summer. However, that's not to say that the day was without drama. When we were about 30 minutes from home Chris quickly pulled over three lanes and stopped the car. We were out of gas. Blech. About 40 minutes later AAA arrived. And wouldn't' you know it? There was a gas station less than a mile from where we had stopped.

Healthy living

When did I become so green? First it was the vermicomposting, and now it's reusable grocery bags. Made some cute ones over the weekend, but then the power ran out and then I ran out of thread, so they didn't get finished. Photos coming soon.

Also, Sunday Chris and I went on an 18+ mile bike ride in 90 degree heat. My butt's a bit sore, and my legs are slightly jello-ish.

About the bikes... I drive past a bike shop every day on my way to and from work and thought it would be good to get one. I had Chris semi-convinced, and then our stimulus check arrived. :) Half of it went to credit cards, the other half went to bikes. Wow, they're expensive! And then there's all the extra stuff you can get. I got a cyclometer because I want to know how fast/how far I've gone, but I was good and got their cheapest model. And then we also needed a bike rack. We went with one for my car rather than the truck, which means we'll have to do some creative packing of the car when we head to Maine this summer (with bikes in tow). Usually we have the bed of the truck pretty much to overflowing, so it will be interesting to see how well we cram it into my care.