Firsts and Lasts
01 August 2013 | Northeast Harbor, Maine
Firsts and Lasts
July 29, 2013
We have been here for two and a half days. It is time to go now that we know a few local restaurants and museums. A strange pattern emerges once we make a harbor. We spend the first day just resting and cleaning the boat. We refresh our water supply and dump the trash. The second day is liberty day ashore where we take a walk and perhaps find a burger ashore. If we do not plan to stay longer, we provision and refuel. We have done all that at Rockland and will leave here tomorrow. One thing that may change that is the fact that we are now in a driving rain and the fog is dense. We won't know the result until first light tomorrow.
We stopped in a Puffin Project operation today to learn about the cartoon like bird. It is an amazing story. The bird is a cute, colorful parrot like creature that comes to land only to breed. That means they spend most of their lives at sea. They almost became extinct were it not for some science types that helped establish new colonies on islands near here. We hope to see some soon but the window is closing. They leave for sea at the end of July. They do not return to land until nesting season next year. The first timers do not come back for up to three years. I am guessing here that the equivalent of the cheeseburger is in high demand when they do return. The usually mate for life and return to the same hole in the rocks to procreate.
As we approach Mount Desert Island we look forward to seeing it and to the next step of reversing our course. Today was 30 degrees cooler than our hometown and that tells us that the season change is marching toward us. For instance, this marina starts to remove their docks on Labor Day. That said, we will reverse course in the next few days and head back the way we came except we will visit places we missed on the way here. More firsts yet each may well be our last time to visit.