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.