7/5/06 (Wed.): We had a wonderful day today! Wiley got up really early and took David fishing on the breakwater. Bruce was supposed to go too, but he got an upset stomach and was up all night. So he stayed in the motel to rest.

The lobster cruise was cancelled because of fog. We’ll do it tomorrow if the weather clears up. So we went to Birch Point Beach State Park instead. As usual, we took our time getting there and made a few stops along the way.

First we stopped at a tiny general store. It was almost 150 years old and had a nice variety of food and other merchandise. I bought a lobster dish to hold my dish scrubbee. It was about $8, but when the lady gave me the charge receipt, it was for $71.00! She had a heck of a time figuring out how to cancel the charge. I felt very sympathetic—I’d done something very similar my first day on the job in the camp store.

Next we went to a little combination general store and café and had sandwiches and pizza and enjoyed the view over the Wesaweskeag River where it empties into the Atlantic. The Keag Store (pronounced as "gig" by the locals) was built in 1925. It started as a millinary shop and later housed the post office. The owner fell in love with a mail carrier and they married and ran it as a general store. It's been handed down through the family since then. The owner, Sharon Allen, opens at 4 AM every day to provide breakfast to the lobstermen and fishermen who work out of the local harbor. The guys and Katelyn fished from the bridge for a little while and Cathy, Mag and I went through a nice antique store. Cathy bought a tree-top ornament and we had a nice chat with the owner. This is me with a friendly (antique) moose (that's me on the right).

After lunch we headed for the beach. It was a lovely day—warm sun and cool breeze. There was a large group of school kids there from a local camp. The tide was really low, exposing the tide pools. Wiley and David went fishing from the rocks and the rest of us sat at a picnic table that a nice young man offered to us. He was the driver of the school bus the kids had arrived on. We had an interesting conversation with him about growing up on an island and going to a one-room schoolhouse. We later found out that he’d lost his son in Iraq last year. There were also a couple of kids with buckets full of jelly fish that they were showing off to anyone who would listen. It was so great to be with family again!

We came back to camp and sat around the pool for a while. Then we did hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill. I’d made some potato salad this morning before we left. We ended the day with a fire and s’mores.

It was memorable!