August in Arkansas and visiting the Mainers

August has been another unusually hot month here.  We finally had to water the lawn, so I can’t say any longer that our grass is truly heat and drought resistant.  We have an automated system and the good news is that watering all month put less than $10 on our water bill.  Cheap water down here, but our electric bill is almost five times what it was in May. 

You would think the upside of these endless sunny days would great news for the garden, but the lack of cool nights has resulted in a less-than-stellar crop of tomatoes. I think we’ve pulled fewer than a dozen so far. I re-applied some local manure, and am hoping for a late season surge in production. The peach crop wasn’t great, and even though we had been looking forward to the local watermelon festival, it turned out to be more faux-fest than melon fest.

We even had to leave the county fair early due to Jack having heat exhaustion. Hopefully cooler weather in September will bring more successful attempts at living the southern life.

We looked forward to leaving the heat of Arkansas for our annual trip to visit my family in Ocean Park, Maine, and  the New England weather did not disappoint.  Though, you really do have to expect every type of weather while you are there. 

Here's Jack at low tide diging a hole to China, and as the tide rolls back in, burying the feet in the sand, over and over again (for two continuous hours).

We made a few side trips while we were there.  We took a 2-hour drive north of Ocean Park, to the Penobscot Bay region of Maine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aFXSVq0qvo to visit Camden and Rockport. Highly recommended if you're looking for the rural New England experience.  In the span of a few hours, the weather included 80 degrees and sunny, a land breeze, hail, fog, pouring rain, lightning, then back to sunny, with a slight ocean breeze. But, as they say in Maine, “The’as no such thing as bad weatha’, just bad clothing”. A’yup!

While we toured around downtown Rockland, we got a good feel for how much different this part of the state (mid-state) feels from the southern part where we were staying.  You’ll see sharp black rock cliffs leading right into the ocean vs the sandy shores in the south.  We had a great lunch at The Brass Compass Café and enjoyed their Lobster BLT, made famous by winning a “throwdown” against celebrity chef Bobby Flay.  It was awesome, and huge.  Try a pound and ½ of lobster, three slices of slab bacon, native tomato and lettuce with garlic aoli, on home-made texas-sized toast. 

We toured a few art galleries and shops, but by the time we got to the Farnsworth Museum, we were arted-out (http://www.farnsworthmuseum.org), so we decided we’d skip the Andrew Wyeth exhibit and go for a drink.   After a bit of walking, we found a spot out at the end of a pier, and in keeping with the theme of large Maine portions, I had a rum drink prepared Mainer-style (fill a pint glass with ice, pour it half-way up with spiced dark rum, squeeze in the juice from half a lime and a squirt of tonic water). 

If you do this, you may want to consider a long walk afterward, or get a hotel room, because that’s a big boy drink. We picked up a couple of children’s books at a small Rockland bookstore, which are now among Jack’s favorites (The Wicked Big Tohddlah, and Leroy the Lobster (featuring a wicked big green codfish)). He now refers to himself as a codfish and to the closets as codfish caves.

In addition to enjoying the beach and the unusually warm Maine water, family time included sitting around the fire pit telling stories, celebrating my Mom's birthday, listening to the Red Sox on the radio, playing LRC on the porch, great meals every night.  We got to say goodbye to niece Julia (she attends Penn State in the fall), heard niece Mia play guitar and provided her with her first babysitting gig (including a giant diaper change).  Nieces Hannah and Camy included Jack in lots of play, and nephew Drew selflessly donated all of his matchbox cars to Jack. 

 Nana and Pa got to spend some time with him, though it seemed he was more interested in racing his new cars around than in being picked up for reading or sitting on anyone’s lap.  He wanted to run to the beach every morning (but would end up being carried half of the three block distance), was only interested in burying his feet in the sand and filling pails with water.

  He’s still a few years away from jumping in the waves, and exploring I guess.  All in all, the whole family was great about including him in the fun, and in just showing him attention.  We took the kids over to Old Orchard Beach to go on the rides (Jacqui went on more than Jack).

We enjoyed an evening down in York, ME with my hometown friends from Dracut (Steve & Beth, Jim & Jody, Greg & Kim and Pete & Kathy) who had all decided to take a trip up.



We had dinner ocean-side with the whole crew, with waves crashing on the rocks, and the smell of the ocean spray in the air. I think the restaurant was called The Anchorage.

Afterward, we went out for a few drinks, and then walked out across the mudflats at low tide to look at the stars and the moon. Good times. Pete drew the short straw to drive the 30 minutes back up to OP, and schooled us on how to “drive with the orderly flow of traffic” even if that means going 80. The next day we drove down to my hometown in Massachusetts to spend some more time with Pete & Jim, and had more lobster. One of the menu items at this restaurant was $15 for 3 lobsters in shells with sides. When Maine lobstah is running about $4.00/lb. you don’t feel bad about eating it at least once a day, 7 days in a row.

About a week after we got back from Maine, we did get a brief break from the heat and humidity. The temp dropped to 89 so we headed out for our first hike since father’s day. We did a three hour hike at Devil’s Den, which is about 30 minutes south of us. It was a great hike, moderate incline, but Jack is gaining weight, and we carried a lot more water than we usually do. By the end of it, we were pretty wiped out, and I eventually had to perform some minor first aid on Jacqui’s knee.

Speaking of first aid, if you’re ever in need, I’m ready, and qualified to render assistance if you’re injured or having a heart attack. My CPR certification recently lapsed (they’re only good for 2yrs), so I attended a course at the local Red Cross office in Springdale, AR. CPR certification is one of the requirements for competing in most offshore sailboat races, so I got my first one before a Chicago Mackinac race, years ago. I was able to get a combined certification here for adult, child and infant CPR, along with certification for use of an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) and general first aid. We had a good instructor, and I did learn a few things I didn’t know about AED (even after watching it used on about a hundred tv shows). For example, with infants you want to put one pad on the chest over the heart and the other pad in the center of the back. With adults, it’s one on the heart, and the other below the armpit, on the side of the heart. I thought I’d need to put those skills to use on the 30th, while Jacqui was out of town. I heard what sounded like Jack cough or choke, so I walked into the next room to make sure he was ok. He was lying face down on the floor, and didn’t respond to me. Every parent’s nightmare, right? So I grabbed him by the back of the shirt and flipped him over, only to see a curious expression on his face. He was only watching the shadows of his matchbox cars race down his ramp.

That cough of his had developed over the past 10 days, so Jack will be going back to the doctor tomorrow to make sure it’s not turning into pneumonia. The sickness started as a head cold, turned into an ear infection (which we got an antibiotic for), and now it’s a weird cough. If anyone has a really good process for getting the kid to take chalky, bitter medicine, we’d love to hear it. We had been practically water-boarding him to get him to swallow it, but we’ve evolved to threatening a "time-out", with loss of use of the cars, cars book, little cars and cars ramp and cars movie. Around here that’s called “the nuclear option”.

That’s it for now. We hope you enjoyed seeing the photos, and hearing the stories. We look forward to sharing more of our life here with you, as the temperature cools, and football season starts. Next month you may hear about Labor Day in Little Rock, Razorback football, the re-start of sailing season, and hopefully, finally, catfish at The Backwoods Barn.