its raining Maine and the existence of cooties

It was supposed to be an amazing full of foliage weekend in Maine. My dad came over so we drove the short 12 hour distance to the Boston area where we spent the night at the Hamptons. unfortunately, its not the famous Hamptons where all the rich people go, but its a nice beach town in its off season phase. we stopped at a simple motel and went for Chinese food. nice dishes with lots of plain good white rice was just what we needed after the drive. on the way we listened to the girl who kicked the hornets nest so the drive actually went well. in the morning we went to the beach for a shot walk, it was windy and too cold for a swim. Alla enjoyed the pacific ocean air, but soon we went back to meet my dad and Liora at Applebee's. we had a nice clam chowder lunch and kept going north, passing new Hampshire and into Maine. we asked in the welcome center where to stopped and the Bostonian help center ranger dude told us to go to buthaba haba... , the problem is that this place doesn't exist. once you overcome the Bostonian accent you realize that its booth bay harbor, a lovely town in the middle of many inlets. for what ever reason booth bay is full of booths, or more specific, touristic shops and restaurants, and though it was the off season and fog is hiding the small nearby peaks, it was still a nice walk. we walked for over an hour, including fudge tasting (yumm) then we had to stop for out jet legged guests. we stopped at McSeaguls. we stopped earlier at the restaurant next door (most places are already closed for the season) but that place was full of bikers so it didn't feel like our kind of place, plus the fact that they had no seating. McSeagulls was nicer with another bowl of soup. we returned to the bed and breakfast for bed and woke up in the morning for breakfast. this bed and breakfast like most of these places here are someone's actual home, so the land lady made interesting eggs and potatoes. we left a bit later and drove on route 1 through the little towns to Acadia national park.

it rained some of the way and it was foggy without the amazing views we expected. we went for a walk on a small trail which was a wooded boardwalk in the forest which took 30-40 minutes of easy stroll , then we split, my dad would drive through all the spots and we walked and we would meet on the top of mount Cadillac, the highest peak in the park. we began to hike up via many stairs of rock, already feeling how out of shape we are, we took some photos of the view which quickly disappeared in the fog. just for the fun, rain began and didn't stop till we reached the peak. this trail had 2 peaks actually, we peaked Doar mountain at 1500 ft (its not that high of an area but it starts low, since the ocean is right there), we almost made a trail mistake, easy since you cant even see the next peak from the fog. but we made the right choice and began heading down from the peak and we had to use our hands which hurts on the seemingly smooth but actually pointy rocks. soon we left the peak and began our way up the 2nd peak, Cadillac mountain at over 1800ft. at an area that looked like the peak with a view point to an amazing view of the fog we found a post explaining about this mountain and discovered that this was the highest in the US Atlantic coast, a nice bonus. we walked to the nearby peak shop and had some hot chocolate to warm us up after the 2 hours hike with my fully soaked shoes. in the shop we found that the actual peak is not at the view point but at some other point 100 meters away so of course we couldn't miss it and we headed up to the area and looked around for the tiny peak marker and looked for a couple of minutes and no luck, Mrs Pacific headed back but i was stubborn and soon found it hiding on a rock and took the mandatory photo.

its true, Alla was 10 meters away, but not at the peak...

we went to the hotel to dry up, then went to dinner for more soup and other things at a nice place i forgot its name. this town is unique where many shops are open on Sunday night. afterwards we walked the main street of BarHarbor (localy known as BaHaba) and passed several very large lobsters selling ice cream. we stopped at an ice cream place where they actually sell lobster ice cream!!! we didn't try it and Mrs Pacific tried blueberry ice cream (not that good).

why Mrs pacific? well, on the 1st morning on the beach , Mrs pacific mistook the Atlantic coast for the pacific coast, in the photos i will send later you will see her laughing hard at herself for it, so I am allowed to laugh as well.

in the morning we walked to an island! how do you walk to an island you ask, well its all because of the moon. with the low tides the path to the island of Bar Island is revealed and you can actually walk to the island and we did. the path has many seagulls who find clams, fly up throw it down on the rocks then dive fast to catch what comes out before the other gulls gull in on the kill. it was very nice to see and they were doing it a lot, much to the annoyance of the clams. we also collected treasures such as open clams and unique rocks, we spiked some stones in the water, reached the island, walked back and had a nice time.

after that we drove to Bangor, the capital of Main. it stopped raining this morning but the town seemed like it had nothing to do (probably wrong), but we had 15 hour to drive so we started driving home and my dad drove to new Hampshire for better fall foliage views. we drove on and on and on ...listening to the girl book and drove...at 3 am the next day we arrived and went to sleep.

on a less fun but more funny event- we seem to have encountered an alien species. it may came from Africa or perhaps from Lithuania we are not sure but 2 weeks after the return we started to itch and had red spots on our hands and legs which begun to spread. at first I thought it was nothing and we let it spread. now that we had no insurance we let it drag more, till it spread more and we decided that it is something, my private pharmacist researched and found that it was kooties- or more specifically scabies!!! who has scabies these days, i heard about it in the army that it comes from dusty blankets, but never actually seen it, till now. so we drove to the free clinic and waited in line, the time was 9:30 am. we registered and were told to come back in 4 hours. the free clinic is not efficient... so we drove 40 minutes back, then 2 hours later drove 40 minutes back and met the doctor. the doctor confirmed Alla's diagnosis of cooties and gave us some lotion. the instructions were to put all our clothes in the wash and put the cream on every where.... and remove it 12 hours later, that was fun and the cream worked , we are now cooty free for over a week.

well enough embarrassing stories for one evening, I will soon send some Maine photos, which is now state 38-39 need to recount..

have a happy Sukkot and happy Columbus day (did you know Columbus used viking maps?)