Happy Thanksgiving

A montage from thanksgivings past:








Happy Thanksgiving from Tom, Megan, and Weston!

Our Thanksgiving in Maine & Sky Watch Friday

Megan and I decided to go to Maine for thanksgiving this year to be with her family and we had fun. We woke up at 3:30 on Thanksgiving morning to get ready for our 5:50 flight. As we were in the air somewhere between Columbus, Ohio and John F. Kennedy Airport, I captured the first light above this city. Would it not be cool if someone could identify this locale? I guess I could take a look at our flight route that day on flightview, and look at the time the photo was taken, and figure it out. I should do that.
With a quick stop in JFK, we left to go to Maine. We arrived about little pond at noon. Since Maine is so far east, the sun goes down very early there. The sun is clearly behind the trees here, but it was only 4:08 p.m. Amazing? By 5:00 it is pitch black.



And as you can see, it has been plenty cold in Maine already this season, and there was about an inch of ice on the pond when we arrived, but no snow on the ground.

Thanksgiving was served and we had a mighty feast. Everyone, including Dublin, wanted a piece.



What a great meal. But alas, we were tired, having been up since 3:30, and the early sunset makes it seem that much later.



So it was off to bed. What would the next day bring?

Well, the next morning everything was quite frosty. I managed to take a picture of this snail and some lichens with my new panasonic LX8 camera that I picked up at at Big Lots for under 100 bucks. Finally, I have a pocketable camera.




While I was taking these shots, Megan and her parents donned their blaze orange to make a trip down to the outlet of Little Pond to see if Beavers had blocked the flow of water.



The two ladies and myself walked while Megan's dad drove their Expedition. Although Beavers had not dammed the outlet, the chicken wire installed by the road crew to deter beavers had actually collected debris, so Kate and Glen went at it with their garden tools, eventually removing the grate.



There were plenty of fresh beaver cuts on the alders however, they had been active on little pond this fall.



In this area of the pond, there is plenty of winterberry, a member of the holly family whose bright red fruits really pop on a gray day.



After clearing the culvert, Kate decided to check out the other side of the pipe. Apparently, she found some debris blocking the stream on that side of the road as well. Here she balances precariously attempting to pull out some clear plastic, and endeavor at which she was ultimately successful.



Just after we were done clearing the stream, it began to snow. How perfect for the day after Thanksgiving. The pond, bog, and stream was quickly blanketed with white.



On our way down, we noticed tons of trash alongside the road. On our way back to the house, we decided to pick that trash up and toss it in the expedition as Glen drove it along the berm.




When everything had been picked up, the back of the Expedition was full of roadside waste.



Our jobs being done, it was time for fun. I challenged Megan to a snowflake-catching-with-your mouth- contest. I'm not sure who won.




Still following? Were still on Friday the day after thanksgiving. In the afternoon it was time to go down to the Dentist's office (glen, my father in law, is a denist) to have my new mouth guard /bite plain thing made. I didn't capture that part, but I did take a picture of Megan's belly at the office. Amazing that we will soon be parents. It is very real though, as I can even now feel the baby kick. Megan says that the baby can kick hard enough to make here shirt move.



After the dentist, we stopped at a few stores and then it was back to Little Pond. The snow had stopped, but it really changed the landscape at the pond. The gray afternoon was almost totally devoid of color, really creating an interesting mood and I was able to capture images unlike any others I had taken there before.



And that is a brief look at the first day and half of our trip to Maine. We were there for 24 more hours, and I'll have more photos soon.

Tom

P.S. I almost forgot- for more Sky Watch images, go here.

Maine

Megan and I arrived Wednesday evening in Portsmouth New Hampshire, our Skybus flight touching down in a light fog. We picked up our rental car, and headed up I-95 to Portland, onto Gray, and then finally to Maine Rt. 26 which would take us up into the Oxford Hills. Of course, when we got to the Oxford Hills, we were greeted with this funny wet white stuff covering the ground. Plenty of snow here!



Here is Megan's parent's driveway, looking OUT towards the street. Yep, they are fairly isolated, and it is pin drop quiet in the woods here. Little pond is pretty far north, north enough to have a nice mixture of pines and hardwoods. There are no less than seven species of conifers to be found on the property, and American beech, red maple, and paper birch are quite common.



The bog and pond, the namesake of Little Pond, were quite eerie yesterday! We started out with clouds and rain, but as the day grew older and warmer, fog set in. I could barely see the pines on the other side of the bog through the misty fog.



What better activity in Maine on Thanksgiving than a hike with the dogs? Dublin and Murphy, the resident chocolate labs of the property, are a bit rambunctious. Here are Megan and here Dad on a walk. I guess its gun season here in Maine, so blaze orange was the thematic color of the day.

And what better way to round out a Maine thanksgiving with a nice goose taken on the pond that morning? Ok...not really. But it sounds good, doesn't it? No goose, but here is Glenn carving the turkey.



All in all, a nice thanksgiving, and I want to put out a shout out to all my family back in Ohio. Lets see your pictures!

Tom