Although I uploaded a ton of pictures to iNaturalist, trying ID the various flowers, trees, and shrubs, I also saw a variety of more mobile creatures. (And also uploaded them to iNaturalist)

I mean, look how adorable!!!!

Long-claw Hermit Crab Pagurus longicarpus

Common Eider Somateria mollissima

Black Guillemot Cepphus grylle

Harbor Seal Phoca vitulina

Common Loon Gavia immer (with chicks!)

Green Frog Lithobates clamitans (hiding in a tamarack)

American Bullfrog Lithobates catesbeianus

Once again I was desperately wishing for a good zoom lens when I was trying t get good pictures of these creatures whose details I couldn’t make out with the naked eye. But I don’t think I did too bad with what I had.

Since we were in Maine for several days, we managed to visit some places we might not have otherwise.

One was Lamoine State Park. It seemed to be mostly a boat launch, but it was late evening and overcast, so it was perfect for a walk along the beach.

Where I got to look at more rocks.

The tide was out, and I eventually discovered what was crunching under my feet.

At which point I moved up from the water line and mostly hopped from rock to rock where I could see there were no snails.

Which is fine because that’s where the fascinating rocks were.

I mean.

OK, yeah, I also enjoyed looking out across the water. That was fine.

Since we were in the area for several days, we had lots of time to explore Acadia, which was nice, since it let us explore instead of having to hit all the highlights before we ran out of time.

Were the places I wanted to hike we didn’t? Definitely. But that’s true for just about every place except Coopers Rock SF.

The first thing we did was (of course) take a scenic drive of the area. I got one of the driving guide books at the visitor center, and we used that to guide us.

We also did a short-ish hike on the Gorham Mountain trail.

We also accidentally hiked up to Bubble Rock.

How do you accidentally hike up to a ridge line? Failing to look at the map and a stubborn refusal to turn around are the answer.

Of course I best liked (wait for it!) the rocky shores.

The next day we did the drive up Cadillac Mountain.

The view was amazing, but there was very little shade, so it was not my favorite spot of the visit.

The drive on Schoodic Point was gorgeous.

We also did some walking on the Carriage roads, which were fascinating in and of themselves, nevermind the scenery

And I was delighted to get to see new wildlife.

Our second stop in Maine (the first was the Maine Coastal Botanical Gardens) was Pemaquid Point Lighthouse Park.

I spent a lot of time walking on and scrambling around the rocky shore. (I may or may not have been singing Birdhouse in your Soul while doing so.)

Yeah, that’s a nice view and all.

BUT THESE ROCKS ARE AMAZING!

SUCH AMAZING ROCKS!

Also, I listened to the ocean a bit.

But really, it was mostly the rocks.

There’s a picture opposite me
Of my primitive ancestry
Which stood on rocky shores
And kept the beaches shipwreck-free
Though I respect that a lot
I’d be fired if that were my job
After killing Jason off
And countless screaming Argonauts

One of my goals for this trip was to check three more states off my “visited” list: Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire.

Also, I don’t much care for interstates, so we took primarily back roads on our drive to Maine. And two of my proposals were to drive through the Green Mountains of Vermont and the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

We spent so long at the Botanical Garden we visited in New York we didn’t get any stops in the Green Mountains of Vermont, but had a scenic drive the next day through the White Mountains.

I have to say that aside from our stop, New Hampshire was kind of disappointing and I’d rather have spent more time in Vermont.

But that stop me made?

Excellent.

At the start of the White Mountain Scenic Route is Flume Gorge State Park. It was a pretty hefty admission fee to get in, but since it was vacation, we splurged.

It was worth it.

It starts out somewhat slow, and you walk up to a cascade down a hill of rock.

Pretty, but I’ve hiked places like that in West Virginia–and could go out on the rocks.

Then you come to a boardwalk that runs alongside the Flume Brook.

Then, up ahead, you can see the walls starting to narrow and the creek getting louder.

The gorge narrows and is stunning.

Then you come to the waterfall.

But that’s not the end. You walk gravel trails (some steep) to high point where you can look into the valley.

Through some more forest and finally across a bridge above the Pemigewasset River.

There is more of a walk through the forest, on a very well maintained path, some large trees, lots of wild flowers, and glacier boulders.

So, despite how expensive it was, I very much enjoyed the walk.

But I’d still like to go back to Vermont to hike in the Green Mountains.

Hard to believe, but we actually left the house for an extended period of time.

It was weird.

I’m still not ok being indoors unmasked (and I’m never ok with crowded places). Luckily, we spent the majority of our time outdoors.

We drove to Maine with my mother, and our first stop was a place we visited a decade ago: Hickory Run State Park.

The main draw is the boulder field.

I can hear you being unimpressed, so… do you see the people in the above picture?

Does that help? Do you see the person in the red jacket? And all the people past them?

This picture of Michael? There are at least twelve people behind him to the left, and at least one behind him to the right.

This boulder field is more than 20,000 years old. It’s a giant lake of boulders stretching 400 feet by 1,800 feet, and as deep as 12 feet in places.

It’s very hard to walk on (I wished I’d had two hiking sticks and not just one) but very much worth it to go out even a few feet and to see just how stunning the boulder field truly is.

Just don’t look down too closely.

So very many giant spiders.

There are other things to do in the park, and we did manage a brief hike.

We would have taken a longer hike, but when it rained on us, we headed back.

I did get this short clip of Sand Spring Run along the trail.

Because I’m me, the other thing I paid a great deal of attention to in Fairbanks was the trees. The boreal forest (Taiga) is beautiful.The trees are very different from what I’m used to here, mostly being black spruce, white spruce, and birch, and all of them tall with thin trunks.

These last two are probably my favorite pictures of the trip.

I wish I’d been more acclimated to the cold, because I could have spent quite awhile wandering along this creek / stream and finding others like it. But hopefully we’ll get to visit again and I’ll be more prepared for the cold.

As I live along a river, I tend to orient myself to water. I found myself unable to do this in Fairbanks, possibly because much of the water was frozen. Also, because I didn’t walk as much as I normally do, because I wasn’t really acclimated to the temperatures during our short visit.

But I did get to walk along the river, which was good.

SO! MANY! DUCKS!

If I’ve been quieter than normal recently, it’s because we were getting ready for our big trip–heading north to visit Tania in Alaska! HUZZAH!

My goals were simple: Spend time with Tania and see the aurora. Both goals were accomplished! Although all my pictures of the aurora were blurry and out of focus, I didn’t mind, since I actually got to see the aurora, and it was amazing.

If you’ve spent much time reading here, you know that we spend a lot of time driving WV roads. Which are pretty abysmal. So of course I was interested in the Fairbanks roads and how very different they were from WV roads. First, being covered in snow was normal. Second, the scenery was so different from what I’m used to, I kept starting at it in fascination.

The angle of the light also made things look even more gorgeous than they already were.

Here are some of the roads Tania drives regularly.

Even more exciting, I got to expand my skill set and drive Tania’s car for a bit!

This may seem a strange place to start with our trip, but in rural areas transportation is how communities survive (or not) so I can’t help but be fascinated.

Technically, this is in Maryland.

But it is labelled the Paw Paw tunnel, and Paw Paw is in WV.

I can’t believe we’d never been there before.

When building the C&O canal, they were in a race against the completion of rail lines, so they decided the it would be easier to build a tunnel than to follow the river (understandable really, because the river is really twisty and the riverbanks weren’t necessarily good for canal building).

It’s pretty impressive.

We totally counted all markers and found the four markers for shafts.

Oops.

Friends were in DC for work on an overlapping weekend, so I went down so I could see them while they were closer than several days drive away.

Saturday, it was supposed to storm all afternoon, so we went to the Air & Space Museum Annex, to which I had never been.

One of the things I especially wanted to see was the shuttle.

The heat tiles were more amazing that I had ever thought!

Seeing the amount of wear on the tiles was both amazing and also made me a little sad, thinking that the loss of a tile caused the death of astronauts.

One of the things I especially wanted to see was the restoration area. Since it was a Saturday, no one was working, but you could see what they were working on.

The restoration of a wood frame plane next to a WWII plane being restored.

To give you an idea of how complex these various restorations can be:

I was tickled (green, rather than pink) by this control panel.

Michael figured out what the black rectangles below the phones were. That amused me even more.

An odd looking piece of technology….

With a name that amused me highly.

I also looked at the WWI and WWII planes, because it astounds me that men were willing to go up into the air in those flimsy things and fight each other. I mean, the WWI planes had synchronizes for their machine guns so they could shoot *through* their spinning propeller without shooting themselves out of the sky.

One thing that surprised me was that the space section actually depressed me quite a bit–so many of the items in that are were for warfare. It seems so wrong that the achievement of leaving the planet was a small thing compared to the amount of time and money spent planning ways to destroy other humans.

But after further thought, it was more than that. The WWI and WWII planes didn’t bother me, because I could see the skill and bravery required to go up in one of those machines and engage in a duel with the enemy. (I have tremendous respect for all soldiers who place their own lives on the line to protect people they’ve never even met.)

Guided missiles, however, are ways to kill people from a great distance, requiring nothing more of the the person firing the weapon than to push a button.

Remember: I’m a pacifist. I believe that I personally cannot lash out at someone–even in self-defense. (It’s far more complicated than that, but that’s a decent summary.)

From that perspective, the idea of being able to kill without putting yourself in danger is mortifying. I understand the need for self-defense, even if I feel it is not an option I can take. But to kill without being in personal danger or to protect someone in your presence–that gives me cold chills.

So to see how much effort has gone into killing with missiles left me feeling shaken.

But besides that, I really enjoyed the museum–and even more enjoyed spending time with my friends: neurondoc, Jeri, and especially MWT, who I’d never met in person before.

I’m so glad I was able to spend all day Saturday with them.

It’s a running joke between Michael and I about how often we ignore the GPS, because it’s trying to kill us.

Here’s a road that is at least marked as inaccessible to cars, but that didn’t stop three vehicles trying to go down the road during our brief walk. Often, the roads are NOT marked as such, so take caution when turning down any gravel road in WV.

Because your GPS really is trying to kill you.

It doesn’t look too bad here. We stopped one SUV of foreigners from attempting the road. (“No! Your vehicle will NOT make it!”)

Dappled light makes it difficult to see this is a puddle stretching completely across the road. You cannot tell how deep it is. (It’s there year round. It’s deep.)

This is the first section of road that causes people to turn around. Most cars do not have the clearance to go over those rocks. Lots of trucks don’t have the clearance to go over those rocks.

It’d been raining recently, so the creek across the road was unusually high. But even in dry weather there is always a small creek there.

There was a truck in the creek when we walked back. I think he was just playing around, but he was slipping while trying to turn.

Now we’re past the creek, and the road really turns into a muddy mess.

This is why I always advise people to NOT take a gravel or dirt road, unless that is their destination. A short cut really isn’t. Especially if you don’t have cell signal and are trying to find someone to tow you out.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t been to the National Aquarium for years, because many of the tanks used to be bare, and I really disliked that.

They have remedied that, which makes me very happy. Rocks and other items make the tanks look natural, and the octopus even had multiple toys.

Even better, they had a huge jellyfish exhibit, although to my sadness, they didn’t have benches where you could just sit and watch.

Poison dart frogs!

Puffins!

But most importantly: JELLYFISH

It makes me ridiculously happy that so many of the pictures I took of the jellyfish turned out.

There are lots of historical areas in Baltimore, but the two we specifically visited this time were Federal Hill and Fort McHenry.

Federal Hill overlooks the inner harbor. This is taken from the public park at the top of the hill.

Fort McHenry is a national park, and the site of the battle which led to the Star Spangled Banner.

The same cannon, three different views.

The cannon fascinate me as much as they horrify me. I’ve read several descriptions of battles involving cannon, and they all describe smoke, terrible noise, complete chaos and underlying that, the knowledge that cannon blew up on a regular basis.

These are truly giant cannon, permanently placed.

The mechanisms for aiming the cannon.

There were multiple cannon from Fort Pitt.

I politely waited to ask the gentleman if I could take a picture of him in his outfit.

Sadly, he had only plain buttons, instead of decorated unit buttons.

And the magazines were also preserved.

Although the outside doors have been removed, you can still the hinges and how they would have fit. (The inside doors remain in place and locked.)

Then there were the walls….

And lastly, we were lucky that it was clear and windy, and they were flying the largest flag.

Oh! And the view!