A Cold Maine Story

Vero Beach
No LL

Happy New Year everybody!

This morning I passed by the sailor's lounge. They had a TV on there tuned to the weather channel. I saw a picture of some people skiing on the beach in Maine. The snow went right up to the surf and that's where they were skiing. It reminded me of the pictures below.












Here's the story. On our honeymoon, we set out to go to Acadia National Park on the coast of Maine. We never made it. Along the way we found so many other interesting places that we ran out of time. On two other occasions, we took vacations with the family with Acadia as the intended goal. Both times, the same thing happened to us. We saw so many things and had so much fun along the way that we dawdled and never got that far.

Two summers ago, we sailed to Maine on Tarwathie. We had a great time. We got as far north as Isle Au Haut. That island is actually part of Acadia, but not the central part. We loved the island so much that we dawdled there for four days, and never did sail the remaining 10 miles to get to the real part of the park. That made four attempts to get to Acadia without success.

However, Libby and I have been to Acadia. One December Friday in the early 1990s, I came home to Burlington, weary after several stressful weeks at work. I needed a short break, so we decided to take a three day weekend. Libby and I enjoyed traveling by the spin the bottle method. We got in the car, started the engine, then spun a bottle. It pointed ENE. How perfect! That course would take us across Northern Vermont, Northern New Hampsire, and Northern Maine directly to Bangor and Acadia national park. Best of all, the route took us nowhere near the coast so we would not be distracted or diverted.

We drove straight through to Bangor, and by the next morning we were at the gates of Acadia National Park. The only trouble was that it was bitterly cold and windy. It was a Nor'easter. Oh well, we weren't bothered by crowds. We were the only tourists in sight.

We finally reached our goal when we came to the sea shore. We got out of the car and walked to the beach. It was hardly an idyllic marine scene. The wind howled, we were very very cold, and visibility was only a few hundred meters. Most amazing, we saw balls rolling down the beach. Closer examination showed that balls of foam were being blown from the breaking wave tops. The balls froze in mid air into rigid sphere which the wind blew down the beach. The pictures above show us enjoying our private day (and only day) at Acadia.