Weekend at Lake Deering

     The entire rehab staff at my work consists of me and an Occupational therapist named Sue. We have had lots of time to talk and get to know each other since we are the only people in our area of the building. She recently went back to school for Occupational therapy and she is also a "traveler". She has been traveling all over the country for about three years now, but she is from Maine. Her permanent residence, when she is not working, is a beautiful lake house about two hours north of where we work. This weekend she invited me to come up and hang out so I could experience “real” Maine, as she calls it. 

    It worked out really well because one of the things on my “Maine bucket list” was to go to the end of I-95 and her place is so close to Houlton (the last city along I-95 before Canada) that I decided to stop there first and then head down to the lake house. So I can now officially say that I have been to the Southern most point of I-95 and the Northern most point. Pretty cool I think! Houlton was a cute little town. It had a nice historic district, but mostly it had a lot of border patrol cars roaming around. 

     When I arrived at Sue’s lake house (which Mainers call a “camp”) I was immediately struck by how incredibly beautiful it was. The lake was flat and all around it were hills filled with trees. It was not very developed which added to the beauty. 

One of Sue’s neighbors was having a birthday party (he was turning 80 years old!) We walked down and said hello to everyone. They were all really nice and I met the birthday boy, his children and his grandchildren who were around my age. We played volleyball and I had a red hotdog which is, apparently, a Maine specialty. It’s really just a hotdog with red food dye in it, but I was told I had to try it anyway.  

     After the party we drove around the area so I could see the sites. We went through a little town that was about 10 minutes away where Sue used to live back when the town was thriving in the 80’s. Her and her husband owned the general store on the main street and they lived in a little apartment right above the store. How cute is that!  Now the town is pretty small and the general store is not open anymore. Further, along the road there is a windmill farm where you can drive up to the base of a windmill and stand right under it. I have seen plenty of windmills from afar, but to stand right underneath one is really cool! They are HUGE and when the blades are moving it sounds almost like a distant airplane engine. 

Finally, on our way back to her place we drove up to Peek-a-Boo Mountain where there is a lookout tower. It was great. The sun was setting and the cool air was so clear you could see for miles. Looking out on one side of the tower you could see into Canada and on the other side you could see Mount Katahdin, the tallest mountain in Maine, which is in Baxter State Park. Amazing!! 

These five islands are creatively named "Five Islands" and beyond them is Canada. Technically, the islands are in international waters.

Mount Katahdin in the distance before the sunsets.

this is a more zoomed out view of the five islands and the Maine/Canada border.

     When Sue and I went back to her place we had a fire in her back yard, cooked turkey burgers, made S’mores, chatted and enjoyed the great weather. (It cooled down a lot this weekend. Highs of 65 and Lows of 45.) This morning I woke up to Sue’s friend (and tenant) cooking blueberry pancakes for breakfast. Tammy is a nice girl who is a little older than me. She helps to maintain the house since Sue is away most of the time. She works as a camp counselor at a Christian summer camp, and was actually packing today to leave on a weeklong canoeing trip with 10-12 year olds this week. Both Tammy and Sue are great Christian women and I am so blessed to have met them. I am always blown away by how God continually provides exactly what I need everywhere I go! Sue has so many ideas of stuff for us to do that I am not sure I am going to have enough weekends to do it all! Its great I have my own personal guide to Maine. After we ate breakfast Sue and I took a drive over to Canada just so I could say I have been to Canada. It looked pretty much just like Maine except there were Canadian flags flying instead of American. Other than that we just hung out till it was time to drive home. Another work week starts tomorrow and I just can’t stop thinking about what we are going to do next weekend!