Journals of a soggy Maine vacation -- part five

We finished up this year's Maine trip on a low key, wandering around and looking for whatever might be interesting. The public pier at Falmouth Foreside is a busy place: yes, there are the usual pleasure craft, but it's mostly local business, not tourism:



By the way, clicking the photographs will send you to a full-size version with all the details. Several people have commented on the small pictures, and it really isn't obvious.

Here's something you don't see too often: a crew was busy about half a mile away getting ready to move this house. I can't imagine how they are going to get it down the hill to the road — it's only about 100 feet away, but a drop of at least 25 feet. I wonder how much a house like this weighs... it's not exactly something you tow behind your Chevy.

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We packed up on Friday, leaving a smelly rectangle of muddy dead grass behind, headed back home with an overnight stop in Brattleboro, Vermont. It felt so luxurious to take a hot shower without worrying about running out of quarters, and to walk around with dry feet. The mud stains will take a while to disappear completely from our feet and ankles, but it's a good start.

This has been a good vacation. It wasn't what we had expected, and the weather was disappointing... but spending the time together and doing what we pleased was wonderful. As wet as we were, it was nothing compared to the folks along the Susquehanna river basin who were flooded out of their homes. Tomorrow's weather doesn't look good: our meteorologists are expecting something like four inches of rain, largely concentrated in areas that had already flooded and still have saturated ground. Later this week Hannah leaves with a group from our church for Biloxi, Mississippi: part of the ongoing cleanup from Katrina. I hope they don't return home to find the same conditions here.