Another Wonderful Summer

We have finished another wonderful, fun summer here at Green Lake NFH.  The staff put on a feast for our appreciation lunch.  I took a lot of pictures but with everyone moving around and eating, they were all pretty blurry!  We had grilled chicken, sausage, extras and even apple pie and ice cream for dessert.

We received a bag full of delicious “Made in Maine” foods.

Even little Jack joined in to play!

Jack is getting bigger.

(See June 21, 2019 Blog; Dog Days of Summer)

We have had a fabulous two summers here and will miss the staff and this beautiful area. 

We hit the road this morning (Sunday, September 29, 2019) and are slowly heading back to Texas.

We have a few stops planned along the way.  Stay tuned.

Fins and Minkes

No matter which ones you see, whales are always a treat. 

We went on a whale watching trip out of Lubec with Downeast Charter Boat Tours and Captain Ralph.

The tide was way out when we arrived and we had quite a downward walk toward the boat.

The Lorna Doone, is a 25' Northern Bay lobster yacht, located on Johnson Bay.

We took this trip in 2011 (See August 31, 2011 blog post Whale Watching on the Bay of Fundy).

The Lorna Doone is very comfortable.  It only seats 6 passengers.

We had a beautiful calm day for our trip.

It took us about an hour to get to the whales.  We stopped for birds and seals along the way.  The Bonaparte's Gulls were already losing the jet-black hoods that they wear during breeding season.  Fall is on the way!

And it seems we like see a Bald Eagle (or several) anytime we're on the coast. Can you spot this one perched in the tree?

We saw several groups of Gray Seals, including this group with a pup.

Seals swim in the channel known as the Narrows between Lubec and Campobello Island.

Did I mention it was low tide?

The tides here are twenty to twenty-five feet through the Narrows and surrounding bays.

We saw three Fin (aka Finback) Whales, which are the second largest animal on earth at a length of 80' and a weight of 100,000 pounds. Only the Blue Whale is larger.

It is pretty much impossible to get an entire Fin Whale in a picture due to the way they swim, so here is an illustration so you can see what the entire whale looks like:

Now here is what we usually saw from the boat:

Comparing the illustration with our picture tells you that we generally saw less than half of the whale, and they were still huge!

In this picture you can see the "blow" which is the whale exhaling through its blow hole on the left, and then part of the back and the small dorsal fin well to the right.

Later in the trip we saw a couple of Northern Minke Whales, which are on the small end of whales at  around 20' long and 10,000 pounds. It turns out that Minke Whales aren't any easier to get pictures of, as they tend to surface and then dive very quickly. Here is the best we got:

This international bridge connects Maine with Canada.  Canada Custom on the left, US Customs on the right. We were right off the Canadian shoreline for our trip.

The end.

Wrapping Up A Few Things

We’ll be leaving in THREE days!  It’s hard to believe this summer is over.  As predicted, we had as much fun this summer as we did last summer.

For the first time Mark decided to rent a car while we were here.  We put over 10,000 miles on that rental car before returning it last week!  That’s a lot of mileage that we didn’t put on our brand-new truck. 

Last year I was eligible to buy the National Park Lifetime Senior Pass.  I didn’t purchase one and we could have used it a few times on the drive to Maine.  The only place in Maine to purchase the pass is Acadia National Park.  We waited till the summer season ended then headed to the Park headquarters.  Even with the huge crowds gone for the summer, there were still plenty of people to wade through at the headquarters.  The purchase of the pass went quickly ($80) and I’m now the proud owner of the American The Beautiful Lifetime Senior Pass. 

We are hitting all our favorite restaurants in Ellsworth and Bangor one last time.  86 This, Governor’s, Pat’s Pizza, Helen’s, Shinbashi, and the best Mexican food restaurant in the area, Las Palapas.

We were given our own office and locker at the hatchery.  We kept our waders and water boots in our locker and just a few things like extra hats, gardening tools in the office.  There wasn’t a lot but everything is cleaned out and ready for next year’s volunteers.

Our office

We drove the mower and weed eater up to the volunteer site for one last mowing and trimming.  The area looks nice.  It will be covered with snow in a couple of months.

We ended up with another paint job.  After painting 28 green tanks, we were asked to paint white circles inside those tanks.  The filter screen sits in the middle of the tank and the white circle is thought to keep the tiny little fish from congregating around the filter.  There were always plenty of fish in the white circle so I’m not sure how well it works but we painted 28 white circles.

We knew we would have left over white epoxy paint and Fred (biologist) wanted some new boards cut and painted for various things.  We bought a nice sheet of plywood, cut it into multiple sizes for various projects and had enough paint for two coats on each side.

We also had some left-over green epoxy paint and painted some new dam boards for our newly finished raceways.

One last vacuuming of the walkway over the future brood to get all the old, moldy food off the floor.

We still have a couple of work days left but we don’t have any big projects we are rushing to finish.

Stay tuned.

Things To Do In The Fall

A couple of weeks ago a big sign went up on the road a few miles from us saying that Johnston’s Apple Orchard was open to pick your own apples.

We like apples so Monday we decided to head on up to the orchard and check it out.

This place is huge.  They grow 9 varieties but you can only pick certain varieties on certain days. 

We got our hand picker but didn’t bother with a wagon since we didn’t plan on picking a lot.

The picker works exceptionally well at pulling the apple off and leaving the branch.

The apples were low enough that we could also just reach up and pick them.

The trees had all different size apples on them.  This is a good size for a snack.

We picked the three available varieties - Cortland, Mac and Paula Red.

We weighed ‘em and paid.  3 1/2 pounds.  50 cents a pound.

There is a small store on site where you can buy already bagged apples, and a few other things.

We were out of maple syrup so bought a jug. 

It was fun walking around the orchard and picking our own apples.

The Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association held their annual Fair this past weekend.  We haven’t been to any of the fairs this year so we drove about 1 1/2 hours to check it out.

Even though we got there about 20 minutes after it opened, we had to park pretty far from the entrance.  There were things to see along the walk.

Alpaca

They were expecting 40,000 people!

Other than being enormous, there was the typical fair demonstrations and attractions.

Solar cooking

Lots of giant vegetables in competition.

Giant beet

Giant squash

Cabbage bigger than your head!

Plenty of odd veggies too.

This sunflower head would keep a bird happy for days.

There were lots of booths and things to purchase.  Mushrooms were very popular.

There was also a large farmers market.  The vegetables are organic and beautifully displayed.

There were also animals being shown in competition.

Don’t stick your fingers in the rabbit cages!

We had a fun Fall day.