Maine Event - Days Eight, Nine, and Ten

Sunday morning brought more sunshine, so we puttered around the house a bit and then made a beeline for Popham Beach. The day went without much excitement other than Leigh finding a sand dollar about the size of a fifty cent piece. Emily once again had a fantastic time and even worked on her swimsuit modelling skills. We also flew my parafoil kite, which requires a good bit of wind to fly, but is extremely stable once it's up. Since we knew the secret of the beach, there was no mystery to the phenomena of the growing beach, but it was still super-duper. We knew this time to take our shoes to the island so we could explore a bit, so we tramped around it for quite a while. That was pretty much it for Day Eight. Day Nine didn't see much action of note until we headed to Portland to pick up Mamaw and Papaw Hinkle. After we loaded them up we stopped at L.L. Bean for a bit. They don't allow you to leave the state until you've made a purchase there. We drove down to the restaurant at Fort Popham and once again treated the blond-haired, blue-eyed offspring to ice cream. By the time we got back home we were ready to relax and call it a day. As we were knee-deep in the process of calling it a day, we heard a bit of a ruckus on the back porch. Leigh sprang up to investigate and found that a couple of raccoons were helping their masked selves to the cat food. I guess we didn't close the door soon enough, eh? Leigh thought it rather preposterous that one of the cats was sitting on the porch just watching the nocturnal pests ingest the food intended for it, but I was fully supportive of the cat. The cat had absolutely no reason to intervene--the cat food dispenser gets refilled no matter what beasts are responsible for its emptying. Later that evening, Leigh popped out to the porch for a final checkaroo. I hid behind the curtain and gave her a good "REEEEEOOOOOOOWWWWRRRR" when she came back in. She wasn't happy--party pooper! Today I once again whipped up a mean batch of pancakes to feed the troops. If you fry 'em in butter they taste just like the ones at Cracker Barrel. Yum me! We had planned to take a clam bake excursion this afternoon, and we decided we could squeeze in a visit to Pemaquid lighthouse prior. So we motored down to the point and viewed the local scenery. We all, except for Emily, went up into the lighthouse and enjoyed the height-enhanced view. They won't allow units under a certain height to ascend due to insurance limitations. It was spitting rain a bit and quite chilly and windy--we all wished we had brought heavier coats. Nonetheless, we pushed on to Boothbay Harbor just in time to board our Cabbage Island Clam Bake excursion. We were informed from the outset that there would be no clams due to the recent excessive amount of runoff. Evidently runoff from roads taints the mudflats and they can't dig the clams until they have time to regain a the accepted level of purity. So instead of two lobsters and some clams, we were apportioned three lobsters per in addition to an ear of corn, a baked potato, a boiled egg, and an onion. As you might suspect, this was more than the average person can fork down in one sitting. After dinner we went to the lee side of the island, which, due to being out of the wind, was much warmer. We sifted through the rocks and gathered a lot of nice snail shells. We also monitored some live ones sliming their way across the rocks, and I found a crab about the size of a nickel. We did a bit of shopping after we got back to the mainland, and after filling Emily's hot chocolate tank (it was on "E"), we pointed the Subaru toward Wiscasset and Emily was asleep within two minutes. Hopefully we won't have any run-ins with wildlife tonight and we'll be well-rested as we journey to Acadia National Park tomorrow.