Maine Trip - June 2008

The family is finally together again and we were off to Maine for a week. We traded our timeshare week for somewhere close to our new home. Our "home base" was in Bethel, Maine which is close to New Hampshire and Vermont.

You can't go through Vermont without going to a Maple Syrup Factory...

We took a day trip to the coast of Maine to visit Acadia National Park (and get our stamp). It was a beautiful park and we enjoyed playing in the Atlantic Ocean (it is cold, but that didn't stap the kids from playing in the water. We stayed the night in Bar Harbor after exploring Acadia.

The Maine state capitol building in Augusta...

We took a high speed CAT ferry to Nova Scotia Canada. It got us from Bar Harbor, Maine to Nova Scotia in less than three hours (half the time of a typical ferry). We did a day bus tour of Nova Scotia and went back to Maine the same day. We learned about catching lobster on our tour - it worked the kids caught lobsters.

Lobster boats in Nova Scotia....

Yes - a snowman in June... We went to Santa's Village amusement park in New Hampshire. There were not many people there (school was still in session in the East Coast). All the rides were Christmas themed. We were singing Christmas songs all day - wow!

We went to Quebec City in Canada for a night. The city was celebrating their 400 years of settlement. There were all sorts of festivities happening in the city. They did a film, light and music presentation on these large silos across the St Lawrence River - amazing. The historic city is surrounded by a fortified wall. The city is very European in feel and most people spoke French. We definately need to go back to Quebec!

The streets of Quebec on a perfect sunny day...

St Gauden's home (National Park) is a historic artist's colony. St Gauden is the sculpturer that created the Lincoln statue at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC and also created to double eagle gold dollar coin.

This is the home on the National Park Estate of Marsh - Billings - Rockefeller. The park is dedicated to conservations and preservation of natural resources. It is a beautiful and informative estate.

We visited Joseph Smith's birth place in Sheridan, Vermont. The monument is an amazing one piece of granite that is 32-1/2 feet tall (one foot for every year Joseph Smith lived). It is a very breath taking area.