Yesterday, friend and camper Douglas wrote on my Facebook wall…

How about that light snow, this morning – followed by gale winds, still continuing?

I never know what to expect when stepping out the door, since this solid brick house keeps us separated from the sounds of winds and the like.

Maine is interesting at any time of the year!…

He isn’t kidding.  Last week the temperatures soared into the 60’s and yesterday we were trying to nestle the sprouting garlic shoots into thick beds of dry leaves because the predictions were for temps in the single digits…welcome to our world 😉

As I mentioned in the last post, Steve’s sister Shari is visiting from the Berkshires this week.  To celebrate the sunny afternoon, we drove over to Sandy Point Beach in Stockton Springs…it’s only about 10 minutes up the road but it looks completely different from our beach here at the campground.  This lovely state park is located in the estuary between the Penobscot River and the Penobscot Bay.  We’re so used to enjoying it in our back yard that we forget this is the second largest estuary on the entire East Coast.

In the 1800’s this beach was the site of several shipyards building three-masted schooners and a sawmill.  during WWI the US War department used the land to build a defense shipyard.  In the early twentieth century it became a passenger stop on the Boston-to-Bangor Packet and then mid-century a pier was built for a fertilizer plant that operated into the early 1970’s…when you pause and look around, you’ll see cement foundations, timbers, bricks and rebar to remind us the commercial lives of the past.  Today the park comprises of 104 acres, has almost 5 miles of groomed walking trails, wheel chair accessibility to some parts, bathrooms and plenty of benches in the prettiest view points…it’s a great place to swim, picnic, hike and watch the ospreys nesting and the seals sunning just off shore.

It looked like this the other day: