7-4-06 (Tuesday): Happy Independence Day! We had a very enjoyable day with our family. Wiley and Marguerite, Cathy and Bruce and David and Katelyn arrived late last night. We met them at the motel this morning and had coffee and pastries on the balcony. Their suite is quite nice, with a bedroom, loft for the kids, and charming decor. Unfortunately, it also has a lot of steps and a very low sleeper couch, which made it difficult for Wiley. So we took an additional room for them. The suite is in an old house on a hill high over Clam Cove. There's a nice view of Clam Cove.

The weather was terrific early in the day. We headed for the campground and had the grand tour. I'll let the pictures do the talking for me:

Here are Mag and Wiley standing
on the bluff at the campground. As you can see, the day lilies are in bloom, although the rosa rugosa are beginning to fade.





Here's Katelyn on a rock on the bluff. Isn't she becoming a leggy beauty!













What a handsome group! Left to right, we're looking at Wiley, Bruce, Cathy, Katelyn and David. We really enjoyed touring the campground and introducing our family to our co-workers and some of the campers who are our neighbors and friends. But we were anxious to do a little more touring before Wiley and I had to go to work at 3 PM, so we headed a few miles north to Camden.

We had lunch sitting in the sun right on Camden Harbor in the Bayview Restaurant. The breeze off the harbor was quite cool and the fog started to roll in--luckily I had some spare jackets in the truck. Then we drove up Mt. Battie in Camden Hills State Park. David and Katelyn enjoyed picking out the islands in Camden Harbor. You could actually hear the band playing on the shore near the restaurant where we'd just eaten!

On the way back to camp, we stopped at Rockport Harbor, home of Andre the Seal (I discussed Andre in an earlier blog). The kids enjoyed climbing on Andre (until David fell off). I told him I'd save this picture to show his first girlfriend. It's an aunt's job to plan for the future like this.



Are you sure it's shipshape, mates?









Katelyn really liked the belted Galloway cows that we passed on the way back to camp (and they obviously liked her, too). Wish we'd had longer, but Wiley and I had to get to work!

There's a whole new crop of wildflowers out there. Like the roses, the lupine are about done. Now we have daisies, black eyed susans, queen anne's lace and lots of others that I don't recognize.

Tomorrow we're taking a tour on a real lobster boat! Stay tuned. (By the way, where are all my readers? I miss hearing all your comments!)