Woke up to heavy rain on Monday. We went in to Machias to do laundry and some grocery shopping (oh, so exciting, LOL). No stopping at the Machias Marketplace nor the Riverside Take-out since both are closed on Mondays. Nothing else going on…..
Tuesday & Wednesday the weather was beautiful. We went kayaking in the Bay both days. It reached 81 degrees on Wednesday. Rob also took a long bike ride that morning, and both days we spent a lot of time in the tent.
Click any picture below to see a slideshow.
Tuesday we saw lots more activity from the rockweed crew, and we talked to one of the guys and asked him about it: Their bales of harvested rockweed are taken by truck to Waldeboro, Maine where it is dried & analyzed for purity. Some of it then goes to making fertilizers and some of it is used in cattle feed. Much of the rockweek harvested here also goes to Canada. We watched the process for awhile; it is hard, physical labor. After pulling up and cutting the rockweed, it is grouped in bales, gathered together, and tyed into groups of large bales in the Bay. Then each large group is dragged by small boat to the shore & prepared for transport by jumping and running on them almost like log-rolling. A truck picks up the bales from the shore. There were only two men doing this.
Wednesday we saw a boat dragging the bay for Periwinkles, a process known as “wrinkling”. We’ve also seen people gathering Periwinkles in the inter-tidal zone near our land, We thought the boat we saw was dragging for scallops at first. Periwinkles are small snails which some people eat. When we came ashore and were hauling our gear out, there was a couple sitting at the boat dock. We were talking to them and they clarified that the boat was wrinkling, not dragging for scallops – scallop season is in the winter. They also said that there’s been conversation and splitting of the communities about rockweed harvesting, which reminded us that this was something that had been brought up also by people who live near our land. The local people, for the most part, feel it’s natural to harvest the rockweed as they’ve been doing it for a long time & for some people, it’s how they make ends meet financially. Whereas some of the “people from away” feel that it may cause problems environmentally to harvest this plant – problems for the natural terrain & for the sea life & birds that feed off it. Not something we ever think about at home!
Thursday I awoke with one eye swelled shut; I was looking mighty pretty, LOL. A mosquito had gotten to my eyelid during the night. Nice! It rained hard all day and was cold; I could hide in the RV. Rob worked on his programming & the girls were happy, as always, to just lie around. Quite windy, too. Not a good day to go outside. Here are some pictures of the kitties, taken recently.
Click any picture below to see a slideshow.
Click any picture below to see a slideshow.
As of Wednesday night, we’ve been gone for one month on Trip #4. We departed home on May 28, so today begins Month 2. Most of the first month was spent at Cobscook Bay State Park, and all but one night was spent in Maine. We’ve heard from several people that June’s weather was nicer than usual, warmer & drier and much less fog. We’ve certainly enjoyed it. We still don’t know what we’ll be doing when we leave here, just that we’ll hopefully still be in Maine, either further north or back at our land. Either way, it’s prime mosquito season in the woods, at least for another month. But at home in NY we’ve read that there’s been plenty of days in the 90’s. So we’ll stay in Maine if we can.