Saturday, July 23 Maine Day 4

Morning hike was a great short trail called Beech Mountain trail.  Lots of wild blueberries on the path.  We ate some and collected some for later.  The trail over- looked a long lake, titled appropriately, Long Lake.

Near the midpoint of the loop we reached a fire tower.  This had and awesome view.

Lewis and Clark scout ahead

Family Picture time!

Since our first hike was so short, we drove to another hike at Sand Beach to hike the Great Head trail.  This trail was really neat with some interesting variety.  Some pf the hike was quite steep and some was over very large smoothed rocks.



Early in the hike we could look back over toward Sand Beach for a nice ocean view.

  

Further into the trail it became more wooded and you could see for miles.



Many places along the trail had very pretty wild flowers in bloom like these.

We eventually make it to Great Head.  Greg and I really liked this spot.

When we fininished the hike, we changed into our swim suits and went out to brave the Atlantic Ocean.  The beach itself was really nice sand.  We were told that this was the only fine sand like this in Maine .  The water, however, never gets above 50 degrees.  The sign warned that swimming was only for the hardy.  Well, that was us.

You could hear people screeching and sqealing as they dared just to dip their toes in the ocean.  Luke had guaranteed during our hike that the would jump in the water and he was good to his word.  Rogan acted like it was nothing at all.  The water was so extremely cold that it actually hurt your feet.

Jen barrels into an oncoming wave.

Beth reacts to an icy wave splashing her back.

I was the last one to go in.   

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While the dips cooled us off, it didn't exactly leave us cleaner as we were covered in sand, salt, and sea weed.

For dinner we ate at Chowdah's Restaurant where several of us tried a whole Maine lobster.  Our waitress was interesting and friendly and loved to respond with the word "absolutely."


 The kids loved to have a bottle of "beer" everywhere they could.  Rogan tried some Maine blueberry soda.

When in Maine, you must eat lobster, right?


We were short on time so we rushed right over to the whale watching place to get our tickets.  While we waited to board, we changed into jeans as we were told that the temperature off the coast on the boat drops dramatically into the 40's.  The boat was large, big enough to hold about 200 people and was super fast.  

The wind on the boat could easily blow off a baseball cap if you didn't turn it backwards.  We had all taken some Dramamine just to be sure no one got sick.  As the boat dipped and rose through several swells I looked at everyone's faces in the group to see how they were handling the waves.  The adults all looked pretty good but Lilly and Rogan did not.  Rogan said he was very tried and laid his head down on our backpack.



Lilly started to lose her color and then began looking a little green.  They had recommended that anyone not feeling well go to the back of the ship.  On the way, Lilly apparently puked her Chowdah's dinner on the steps.  All the moving about the ship and seeing Lilly hurl then made Beth sick and she ended up throwing up her lobster dinner twice.  While this was going on, the rest of us were having our first encounters with live fin back whales, the second largest whales on earth behind blue whales.

Our guide told us that when you see this fin the whale is going down for what they call a "terminal dive", that is,  a dive that the whale will stay down for 5-10 minutes while they are feeding.

As the whale reemerges, they spout like this and it can be seen from a mile or more away.

Despite the fact we had just been hiking in 90 degree temperatures, we are were quite cold on the boat.

Beth is able to smile even though she missed a good part of the whale sightseeing which she had wanted to do all week.  Always finding humor in every situation, Greg joked that she had arched and done a "terminal puke" and they were simply "chumming" for sea animals at the back of the boat.