The weather map that made us pause in Plattsburgh NY.
There isn't much narrative to present - it was the usual Pine Point vacation: walking on sand bars in the morning, supervising the tide in the afternoon, and convening the family and friends for a communal dinner in the evening. Even the pictures are repetitious! Everyone free to do their own thing. It was wonderful!
Some nomenclature - 81JCD refers to the “Little House” that Cindy and I bought in 2010 at 81 Jones Creek Drive. The “King Cottage” or just “the cottage” refers to the shack that my great-great-grandfather Cyrus Shaw King bought in the 1880s. The cottage is across the street at 82 Jones Creek Drive and overlooks the tidal marsh. The “Big House” would refer to the house now owned by my cousin Sally's family that was purchased by my grandfather Howard King Sr some time back in the 1950s (I'm guessing).
We drove again, about 1,600 miles by Google Maps. We traveled by way of Lindsay Ontario again to visit with Káča, spending the first night in Port Huron MI, before crossing the border. And from Lindsay on to Pine Point. This time we stopped in Plattsburgh NY for an overnight stay because a storm system had resulted in local flooding and tornado warnings along our usual route. The trip from Plattsburgh to Pine Point included a ferry across Lake Champlain at 4am, and following interstates rather than the backroad we usually take through New Hampshire and Maine.
The weather map that made us pause in Plattsburgh NY.
Morning freight train.
Egrets, cormorants, and terns feeding on minnows in the shallows of Jones Creek as the tide comes in.
Great heron (L) and snowy egret (R) - notice the color of the bills.
Evening freight train.
Sunrise.
Duck eating a green crab.
Sun rising over the town pier.
Morning light on the Adirondack chair at the cottage.
Cindy collecting a sunset while Mike and Jonathan watch.
Harris, me, Devlin out on the sandbar.
Harris, Andrew, Madison, and Devlin on the beach.
A favorite shot in Hawaiian shirts with grand-dog Fable up front.
It takes two days travel back to Saint Paul, and we like to swing through West Lafayette IN to visit friend and former colleague Barb for breakfast.
Our usual watering hole in Perrysburg (Toledo) OH - Cocina De Carlos
Our usual watering hole in Saint Paul MN - Salut Bar Americáin
Pippin assists with the unpacking
We returned to Pine Point in September — this time flying into Portland — to spend more time with family, and to take a cruise on the schooner Stephen Taber.
The Prouts Neck pine tree in the morning.
Another "little yellow bird".
Scattered clouds over the marsh and river.
On the 22nd, we took a ferry to Peaks Island to visit the Fifth Maine Museum and wander around the island on a rented golf cart.
The monarch butterflies visited Cindy's garden.
On ferry to Peaks Island, looking at one of the ocean cruiser docked at a nearby berth.
Back porch of the Fifth Maine Museum.
Memorial panes in the museum.
Waiting for lobster rolls at Island Lobster Company after our circumnavigation of the island.
Tunnel under Battery Steele on Peaks Island.
Family dinner with HP's family on the 23rd.
Cindy and Mike drove us to Rockland on the 24th to pick up our tour. On the way we stopped at the Red's Eats in Wiscasset to try the famous lobster rolls. They were expensive until you consider that you got the meat of two or more lobsters piled into the roll.
When we got to Rockland, we stopped into the Farnsworth Art Museum to pass some time before boarding time on the Taber. We had dinner with Cindy and Mike that evening as the schooner was to set sail the following morning. Our dining choices were rather limited in the off-season - all the interesting restaurants were closed that evening.
I had never seen cormorants flocking like this. They were pursuing schools of minnows up Jones Creek.
The Stephen Taber at dock as we arrived in the afternoon to check-in.
Cabin #1.
I took the bed to the left, Jonathan the one to the right.
The right hand berth.
Sitting on the right hand berth looking back to ladder up to the deck.
Jonathan rises - with hearing aid in hand.
That's the chef/cook Jason in the tender pulling the Taber out of dock against a headwind.
The stiff wind was a boon to the wind surfers - this one with a foil on his board.
The lighthouse at the entry to Rockland harbor.
Charlie Noble.
The smoke stack of the ship's galley.
Noah, the captain, called this lounging area “the beach”.
A marker of the rock shelf.
Anna, the cook's assistant, preparing for the wine & cheese hour; scrumptious lemon bars in front.
Jonathan taking in the scenery.
Our captain, Noah Barnes, took over operations of the schooner from his parents.
A dockside barn.
The crew coiled the ropes carefully to avoid tangles and snags.
Closer view of the lighthouse.
Scenic seaside farm.
The stack of wood rings connecting the sail to the main mast.
The wine & cheese spread with the arancini Anna prepared earlier.
Because I get up stupid-early, I would sit quietly in a corner of the galley - crew's quarters are in this area.
Another view of the light with the red lenses visible.
Jason returns from Stonington with the lobsters for the evening's dinner.
Anna, Althea, and William head to shore to set up the lobster bake.
Standing on Hell's Half Acre with the Taber anchored in the background.
Setting up the lobster bake (there were no clams).
The adventurous daughter of the bass player exploring a tidal pool.
The lobster bake.
The Stephen Taber as we returned from Hell's Half Acre.
The lighthouse at the entry to the harbor at Rockport.
The evening's wine & cheese spread.
Lining up to partake of the spread.
Map of Penobscot Bay - Jonathan marked our anchorages.
Cindy and Mike picked us up at the dock in Rockland and stopped at the Olson house - made famous by Andrew Wyeth - and now owned by the Farnsworth Museum. From there we drove back to Pine Point.
I was feeling a bit under the weather, feeling achy on the last day of the cruise. Cindy produced a slightly expired covid test kit, that I used to demonstrate that I indeed had caught my second bout of covid. I masked up the rest of the trip including the flight home, where it became apparent that Jonathan had also come down with the virus, even though he tested negative before we left. My bout was rather minor, more a nuisance than anything, but this was Jonathan's first and he felt thoroughly exhausted. When we returned home (hiking up the stairs with our luggage as the elevator was out of service), he did indeed test positive, and got a prescription of Paxlovid which quickly knocked down his symptoms.
Our assessment of our sojourn on the Stephen Taber is that it is an excellent value, and worth going at least once. We found that we are not sailors, and got a little bored towards the end of the trip, but that is just a reflection of our personalities. The hospitality on the Taber was exquisite!
The background on the webpages for this trip is a shot of the marsh grasses on the back side of the point in 2021. I've altered the color, but not the pattern, to match the color scheme of this site. For my own memory: this is done in Photoshop, not Lightroom. Fiddling with the properties the Hue/Saturation adjustment has a 'colorize' option, where I ended up selecting the values +60 hue, +15 saturation, and 0 lightness.
The images on the site, unless otherwise noted, were taken using an Olympus E-M10 II (4608 x 3456 pixel RAW file, ~16 MB) or an iPhone 11.
I've whittled the image size down to two sizes - a thumbnail I use on the page for the day, and a 1280x960 pixel (or 960x1280 pixel, assuming I haven't cropped or altered the size) image that I've saved optimized for web usage.
A lot of the images I doctored using Lightroom, a trimmed down version of Adobe Photoshop. My most frequent adjustments were: "Crop", "Adjust Light & Shadows" to cope with the extremes of light and dark, "Auto Contrast" and "Auto Levels". I've occasionly tweaked up the vibrance on some of the shots to emphasize the color.
