Summer Vacation

Graduation is today and about 5:00 I will be officially free for the summer!  Whoooopeeeeee!  I have house projects galore planned.  Famous last words.  I always think I'm going to get way more done than I actually do.

This week coming up, I'm working on the back deck and back yard in prep for the three day end of year bacchanal that a bunch of us teachers throw.  We host the hangover breakfast on Sunday.  So the yard has to be in tip top shape.  It's a bit weak right at the moment. Pics will be forth coming.

In honor of summer and the fact that we are not going on a real vacation this year, I'm going to relive a little bit of our vacation from last summer.

We drove up the Susquehanna river on our way to Maine and then boarded an 18th century wooden schooner and took a six day cruise around Penobscot Bay.

We stayed with some friends in Alexandria who have a marvelous view into DC and over the Potomac.  This is the view from their balcony.

The next morning we got up and headed to Gettysburg, which neither of us had ever visited.

Coincidentally, we ended up being at Gettysburg on the 2nd of July, the anniversary.  It was crowded.  In all the little New England towns we stopped in, the cemeteries all had civil war memorials, but they were very different than the ones we have down in the south:

Then we just tooled our way up north, stopping at yard sales, antique shops, and small diners for lunch and dinner.  We avoided the interstate as much as we could.  It was a lovely drive.  So lovely that I enjoyed looking at it and not photographing it.  I suck at blogging! We did stop at the LL Bean super store.

Our first night in Maine, we stayed in York Harbor and had our first taste of lobstah.

We then made our way to Camden where we boarded the Lewis R. French.

We got to participate in the Great Schooner Race which was really the Great Schooner bob, as we didn't have much wind, but boy were there some beautiful boats.

Accommodations were tight, but they fed us amazingly well, all cooked on a wood burning stove below decks:

We would sail during the day and stop in the afternoon at various islands and ports in the bay.  One day we stopped at the Wooden Boat School.

After the cruise, we headed up to Bar Harbor (Baa Hahbaa as it is properly pronounced) and spent several days touring Acadia National Park:

So, that was our summer vacation last year.  This year, P is taking 2 weeks off in July and we will be jobbing on the house, trying to get as much done as possible.  I'll be working every day on it and I promise to blog about it and take more pictures.  We do have a week at the beach planned toward the end of the summer.  I think we'll need some RnR by then.

What are your summer plans?