Rice Reunion in Maine

I have been falling a bit behind on the blogging-- finally catching up with all of the various events of Aug. Here are some scribblings and pictures about this year's Rice Reunion up in Maine. I have shamelessly stolen photos from both Blue and Chau-Wen, so the pix below are a mix from three cameras.

Pete, Rosana, and Blue drove up from Maryland on Friday, stopping along the way for a college tour at Princeton. They arrived pretty late (lots of touring and driving). [NB: College tours? Already?!? Yes, college tours].

We then caravan'd it up to Maine together Sat morning; lots of traffic. The gang stopped in Portland for lunch at Duck Fat, a restaurant that had been given a good writeup. It was a nice day, and the place was completely overrun with customers. We decided to order our sandwiches and fries to go, then we hung our on a nearby bench to eat.

We finally arrived in Northport around 2:30 or so (maybe a little later). The rental place, "Saturday Cove Farm" was a big sprawly farmhouse, lots of room, somewhat elderly (I felt right at home). Nice porch, huge elaborate gardens in the back. Humming birds-- Blue got some good shots. The house is near a small set of docks and an inlet just down the hill.

                        

Monday we did hiking; there were loads of places to hike in the area, so we had plenty of choices.

Food: the Rice gang includes quite a collection of formidable cooks, so we had a lot of fun in the kitchen. We had a smattering of vegetarians, plus one kid with a bunch of life-threatening food allergies, so it was a bit of a challenge to come up with meals that would work for everyone (usually we had a bunch of different "options"). The kitchen was not the best I've ever cooked in, but it was fine, so we had no problems making the various things we wanted to concoct. It was especially fun to cook with Rosana; when she is on vacation, if she decides on the spur of the moment that she wants to make a peach pie... she just goes ahead and makes a peach pie... cool :-).

Yum, blueberry pancakes...

Not sure what's being cooked here but it looks good :-)

Since we were staying in Maine, we decided that we would have to cook a lobster dinner; I was entrusted with the task of buying the lobsters and steaming them. The local lobsters were fresh, delicious, and absurdly cheap -- I ordered a big batch from the small family grocery place across Rt 1. How is it that you can buy good lobsters for $3.99 a pound?!? The rental place had a big gas burner out in the back and a couple of large pots, so it was not hard at all to feed the big crowd. Here is Amy keeping a close eye to make sure we don't have any escapee lobsters:

 Keeping dinner cold until it's time to start cooking:

Time to fire up the gas burner:

Adding the lobsters:

 Finished product:

Biking: Saturday Cove is located right on Shore Road, which hugs the coastline and makes for excellent biking to the north, albeit with very steep ups and downs at various places. The ride from the farmhouse up north to Belfast was about 9 miles-- very pleasant ride. Photo from our first ride:

Paddleboarding: on Tuesday morning Amy arranged for a session of "stand-up paddle boarding", which I had never done before. It was fun-- the conditions in the morning were ideal, too (sunny, very little wind). The boards are a lot more stable than they look, so we were able to figure it out without too much trouble. Blue decided that she would join us, which was nice.  We paddled around the harbor area and explored one of the small creeks coming into the bay.

Kayaking: the owners recommended a kayak rental place, so we arranged to rent a trio of kayaks (two singles, one double) for the day on Tuesday. Very nice area to kayak around in, although the bay can be a little choppy.

At the edge of the garden in back of the house they had a sort of pavilion structure with a big fireplace-- one night we went out and lit and fire so that the kids could toast marshmallows. Blue got some interesting photos of people playing with burning sticks from the fire (not quite sure how she managed to get them-- double exposure maybe? didn't know you could do that with a digital camera).

Games: the kids had a good time playing various games both electronic and non-electronic, including "Little Big Planet" (Chau-Wen brought his playstation), "Telestrations", and "Settlers of Cataan". I had never heard of the last one, so I joined in for one of the rounds too (it was fun). We also had a couple of huge sessions of charades, which I adore.

The "bank" of charades clues:

Lydia performing:

Maya (who is very good at acting out clues) always started with this same pose-- very Chaplin-esque:

Aha!

Ethan acting out a clue:

C'mon, you can get this one... it's easy...

Hmmph!

Please, just make a guess...

I had to include this photo mainly because the facial expression is completely bizarre. I can't even remember what I was supposed to be acting out...

On Wednesday we split into two groups; the first group headed off to Acadia National Park to do cycling, and the second group opted for a whale-watching cruise. Ethan and Amy and I did cycling, while Lydia went for the cruise. Acadia is beautiful, and the carriage paths are lovely to cycle on. I've always thought the name "Mount Desert Island" sounded weird, but when we actually got there and started exploring it somehow seemed very apt-- things were drier than I would have expected on the Maine coast.

We had lunch at Jordan Pond House Restaurant, which turns out to be a huge operation (about an order or magnitude more tables than I had expected). Popovers, soup, and sandwiches.

While we were huffing and puffing on our bikes, the whale-watching crew was out and about... photos:

Wednesday night while we were lounging around after dinner a rather large person heavily wrapped in rain gear showed up in the living room-- it was Reinhard. He had flown from Austin that morning to Boston, then rented a Harley (of course) and driven up the coast.

Poker: Chau-Wen and Pete like to play "Texas hold-em", so we had a session. The nice even distribution of chips at the start of the game didn't last long-- players dropped like flies...

... and eventually Pete cleaned us all out on one big hand:

Thursday was overcast and with occasional misting. Pete and Reinhard and I went for a bike ride (I loaned Reinhard Ethan's bike). It was a good hard ride-- brought back lots of memories of bike riding in Texas (and trying to keep up with Reinhard).

We drove back on Friday. It was already raining when we packed everything up and got it into the car, but once we actually got out onto the road the skies opened up and it absolutely bucketed rain for the first hour. I had the wipers on max and even then I had to drive carefully just to make sure I stayed on the road. The rain eased up eventually, but it was quite a ride.