Dawn on Embden Pond
Originally uploaded by jillian_werb
We just had a week at two adjoining cabins right beside Embden Pond, about 100 miles northwest of here, with Bobby, Alistair, Bradley and Rachel.
Lots more photos here.
We swam and canoed in the lake every day - we swam from the beach or swam out to the raft and the children jumped and dived in endlessly.
The children's swimming abilities came on while we were there. We had Bradley, Hannah and Ellie all doing forward somersaults into the water. On the last day we put them all in the lake without life jackets, and they all swam at least several strokes.
The cabin owners left us a two-person kayak, which we took out nearly every day. There were a few speedboats and jetskis on the lake, but mostly it was just very peaceful.
We had a mixture of blazing sunshine, overnight rain, and some days where it was quite windy.
It was a really relaxing holiday, and we didn't do much more than swim and kayak, eat and read, and occasionally go to the playground.
One evening we drove 46 miles over route 16 up to Monson for barbeque one night, only to find the restaurant closed. We ended up eating pizza in a random bakery, with a moose head mounted on the wall right above our table. Quite surreal.
We had a look round Skowhegan... well, we explored the Walmart and got a new battery for the car, and we had dinner at the Old Mill Inn one night.
We saw a few other Kennebec River towns. The river is beautiful in the patches where it hasn't been dammed for paper mills and HEP. It's a very poor area though, with trailers and men with long beards everywhere. While we were there I started reading a book called 'A Year in the Maine Woods' set nearby.
On the way back we stopped at the Harraseeket lobster place in South Freeport, where Bobby had lobster and everyone else had deep fried seafood. We explored the docks, looked at the boats, then Ellie pulled her first ever tooth out!
And now we're home again, and it's raining. What a wonderful week we just had...
