Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Dragging Nana and Papa Around Maine

For Nana and Papa's anniversary on Saturday, we loaded everyone in the van and drove them to a couple of tourist sites around Maine. We started at the Gray Animal Park that rehabilitates native Maine animals (recognize it, Grandma and Grandpa?). Nana had never seen a live moose, so we sought to remedy that immediately.
First, though, we saw this little dude. He's an albino porcupine. "Please, get me out of this joint." he seemed to be saying. Then he gave up and turned around on his branch, so that we were treated to his very pointy rear view.

The only current moose-in-residence was a little on the puny side, but very obligingly positioned right up by the fence, so Nana had her Moose Encounter. Eventually, he too turned to give us his rear view, prompting Daddy Shortbread to comment, "Wow, we'd better get Bear out of here right away since she has a NUT allergy." Ah, male humor. Always a treat.


After taking Nana and Papa to one of our favorite southern Maine pizzerias, we headed to Freeport for the Desert of Maine. Weird? Oh, yeah!
The desert used to be a fully functional farm, complete with a 1783 barn constructed with wooden pegs instead of nails. At some point overfarming removed all the topsoil, revealing the glacial silt beneath. It's now 300 acres of baby powder-fine sand dunes.

Here are Papa and the girls searching for gemstones, which the owners seed in a small portion of the desert for kids to find. They get to keep three each, and it's a Big Fricking Deal for them each time we go. They find as many as they can and then hem and haw over which ones to keep. Remember the polished rocks we used to collect, Uncle Awesome? These are like miniature versions of those.

I thought it would be hilarious to end this post with pictures of Bug and Papa wearing these goofy hats from the gift shop. They were slightly less on board with the idea than I was.

3 comments:

#1quiltinggrandma said...

Saying Bug "was not on board" is a gross exaggeration!! Never, never have I ever seen in real life, and
especially never in a photo op, the Bug not smiling. She is positively grumpy about this photo
op. with the "funny" hat. Grandpa

#1quiltinggrandma said...

Yes, we remember our visit to the park. We really enjoyed seeing a refuge that takes care of animals and not shot them. Everybody looks wonderful, but Bug did take us by surprise not seeing her smile. Can hardly wait to see you all. Grandma

Chris on the other hand looks like he was having fun! Grandpa

Nana said...

I wish I had seen the animal hats in time to participate in the photo op. Personally I think the moose hat would have accentuated my blue eyes. It would have been a real eye catcher of a picture to put in our Christmas letter this year. NOT!!! Oh, well, at least I FINALLY got to see a moose even if he was a bit puny. Great animal park!