I think I woke up first this morning.  I ambled my way to the restroom to cleanup and lit the citronella candles on the way out.  As I come back to the tent the rest of the party is gently rising from the tent, hungry.  We broke out some eggs, bacon, sausage, onions, mushrroms, and peppers.  While we ate we decided that we wanted to go kayaking.  We called one place and they said they were all booked up.  Now here’s the thing, instead of hanging up, he asked us to hold and CALLED the other kayaking companies around the island and found us a slot for 7!

We weren’t scheduled to kayak until 1530 that afternoon so we went back out to Cadillac Mountain to hike an easier trail up.  It was still a pretty difficult climb for us, and Jae/Jae turned back about a quarter way up.  As I moved further up my heels became blistered and by the time we were at a good halfwy point I pretty much couldn’t keep going.  We took a number of pictures along the way and turned back.  By then it was around noon and we drove up to the top of Cadillac Mountain (nature beat us twice, so we figured we needed an assist) and had sandwiches up top.  We took a great relaxing rest up top then proceeded to Maine State Kayak .

The tour was great.  We got in our shoes and put some stuff in the dry bags. They gave us a quick explanation of rowing and had us get into the tandem kayaks.  The rowing was farely easy, but many of the ladies would take breaks along the way.  Sarah was kind enough to keep her oars out of the water while she rested so I wasn’t rowing against the extra drag.  The landscape in the area is absolutely beautiful.  I can totally see getting lost just staring at the landscape.  We’re totally coming back with the kids in the future.  The tour was about 4 hours total, and we took a rest on a private island beach about halfway through.  Despite explicit instructions to urinate in the ocean, a few in our party decided to try and go in the bushes.  They got a little scolding from the guide.

Jane, our guide, is a Chicago native, who came out to Maine for the last few years.  She’s moving to Indiana to finish her education degree and will eventually be a middle school teacher.  Good luck Jane, it was a great tour.

It was pretty late and Jae/Jae had to get back.  She had a citizenship interview the next morning in Boston, so they had to leave that night.  While we prepped dinner, they built a fire to make S’mores.  Jae’s never had S’mores before so we insisted that they stay at least long enough for that.  We made rice and bulgogi for dinner and rested through the night.  It was a really busy day and we were all pretty exhausted.

So we’re back in Maryland now.  It’s good to be home, back to civilization.   The trip overall was great.  Good to be away from TV and computers for awhile and spend time with family and friends.  I think I’ll break up my posts so that each covers a day.  Hopefully this gets me in the habit of posting every day or so. 

It was decided that we would leave bright and early Monday morning.  My mom suggested that Sunny and Sam stay over at her place so that we didn’t have to loop into Manhattan to pick them up.  We all got up around 0300 and probably got on the road by 0400.  In the pitch black morning we fired up the GPS , and headed out towards New Haven to pick up Paul.  It was a really quick trip and got to New Haven around 0530 and proceeded our way up to Boston to meet up with a couple of Sam’s friends, Jae and Jae. (husband and wife, I can’t spell their actual names )

We met at the Cracker Barrel for breakfast at 0800. I had a giant breakfast of Country Fried Steak, white gravy, eggs, biscuts, and grits, plus enough coffee to drown a horse.  I got to sleep in the back on our way out and swapped halfway through at our next gas stop.  We borrowed my dad’s 1992 Toyota Land Cruiser .  We got an amazing 12 MPG out of it.  We got to the KOA around 1430, checked in, pitched our tent and made cheesesteaks for lunch.  The mosquitos were brutal and the bug spray didn’t seem to help out at all.  Within 20 minutes I had a dozen bites on my legs, and Sam had this giant bite on his forehead.

Around 1600 we headed out to the park to pay our fees (only $20 per vehicle!) and just survey the area. We wanted to climb a trail up Cadillac Mountain, but about 50 meters in I smashed my head on a rock and we decided it was too dangerous, given how dark it was about to become.  Besides, Sarah’s steel toe boots were not workinig real well for her.  We walked an easy trail for another hour and then headed out to find an LLBean outlet store we had seen on our way through Ellsworth.  We lucked upon a pair of boots which fit Sarah well.  We even got a great recommendation to a nice lobster house for the night.  What we weren’t ready for was that everything closes by 2100 in the area, so with only 10 minutes to spare we raced over for dinner at Union River Lobster Pot .  The meal was indeed satisfying, we all had lobster, and mussels, clams, and New England Clam Chowder.  They had a 4.5 pound lobster in the tank, and one of the wranglers even “hypnotized” it for us.

We made our way back to camp and settled in for the night.  At that point we had been up for quite awhile   A few of us took showers in the remarkably clean shower facility in the center of camp, soothing our sore bodies and relieving some of the itching.  We had made a quick stop by the Walmart on our way back and picked up some citronella candles, but it just seemd that the mosquitoes for the rest of the trip were just not nearly as bad.

I’ll have pictures up soon.  I’ve just been really busy catching up at work.  Good to be back!

I tried to play tennis with my father-in-law but ended up spraining my ankle early.  We went swimming with Isabelle the first time and she really loved it.  Only thing was I think she swallowed a bit too much pool water and vomited.  We took that as a cue to exit the pool.  As far as we can tell no one noticed.  The suite was spacious with two bedrooms, a kitchen, two baths, and a living room.  They had an odd layout of the doors since I think the suite was built as a one bedroom and they have a bedroom attached through one of those secure partition doors so that the single room could be rented out separately.  The kitchen was fully functional so I made breakfast each morning.

This leads to the two frustrating things about Split Rock.  They kindof treat the resort like a cruise ship.  They charge you for everything, tennis court rentals, movie theater, bowling …  They try to mask it by using a room charging system but it just felt awkward.  When I sprained my ankle only 30 minutes into our two hours on the court they didn’t offer to refund the un-used time.  I can understand if there was a huge queue of people who wanted to play and our reservation kept someone else from playing, but there was no one else there.

Finally the restaurants are pretty bad.  They claim to have three really good restaurants at the resort.  We went to their American style in the Galleria and the Italian themed one in the lodge.  Both were pretty poor in quality and service time.  I think our experience would have been a lot better if the food was up to par.  We ended up going to Burger King, a 20 minute drive out of the resort, for lunch because we just weren’t up for another meal there.  If we ever go again, I’m probably going to fill up the cooler with marinated meats and groceries and just cook all our meals in the kitchen.

It was a good trip though.  Isabelle had fun and got to hang with her grandparents.  Hopefully we’ll find things to do in Orlando so she can hang out with my parents a little more.

So we’re back from California.  Nice trip, but was kindof a blur.  We went to Sea World and Universal, and traipsed around SD for a bit.  Sarah doesn’t want to see another dumpling or Chinese bun for a long time.  We spent much of the trip learning traditional Chinese receipes from my aunt and uncle on my mom’s side.  Apparently the pressure is all on me to carry on the traditions.  How did I, one of the only two ABCs in this family, end up with the job of carrying on the Chinese traditions?!?!!?!  What happened to all my actual Chinese cousins?

Well so I will need to practice a lot.  Just watching my uncle make the buns is amazing.  He’s so quick and fluid, and my aunt roles out the dumpling wrappers with amazing eaze.  It’s just incredible.  I’m completely out of my element, but it’s fun to learn all this.  They only gave me some really rough measurements, so as I get them down, I’ll post them up.  How do you codify “8 scoops of flour”?  Well it’ll be a challenge.  I’ll just have to wait a while until Sarah’s not sick of dough

On a side note, do any of you have those really weird, hyper-realistic dreams?  I was half asleep this morning when I had this sudden panic attack that I had somehow forgotten that I had a calculus final.  I was regretting missing so many calculus classes that I didn’t find out when the final was.  Then I woke up and realized, I’M NOT IN COLLEGE ANYMORE!!!, and I don’t have to take calculus ever again.