Dirt Pie, S'mores and Sushi

Thursday night the troupe packed as much as we could into the CR-V and roof bag for a quick camping trip to Peaks-Kenney State park near Dover-Foxcroft. There was even room in the car for Basker. It was a fantastic campground with a park and sand beach thought we didn't get the chance to take advantage. Ciara is excited to return. Perhaps we can round up some other families to come with.

Marie, who has been very patient with my francais, has been eager to help in any way. She had never been camping before, but jumped right in to help me pitch the tent. This allowed Ciara to start a fire and get dinner ready. Rylan was suffice with a camp chair, lantern and a bottle of wine.....
After finishing half the bottle, he needed to be buckled into his chair so that he wouldn't fall over. If only adult camp chairs had seat belts. We dined on sausage, rice and tomato sauce followed by S'mores. Marie loves fluff, which is hard to come by in France (socialists!!), so we thought she would enjoy the campfire treat, also a first. We went to bed early, but enjoyed the meal and new camp gear that Ciara got for me as a father's /birth day present.

Rylan was the first to get up the next morning. Ciara took him for a short walk while I made some camp coffee. The activity so early in the morning wore him out though.









Aden slept much longer. He seemed to enjoy the hard cool ground. He had wanted to sleep outside the tent, but since he spends his days and nights almost exclusively naked, I didn't think leaving him to the horse flies and mosquitos would be good. Besides, my last camping trip involved black bears in the camp site.




Rylan is very close to crawling. He scoots around on all fours and can generally get to something that we wants. lately, he's been very taken by grass and dirt. No matter what other objects - toys, food, keys etc - we place on a blanket with him, he seeks out dirt or grass to munch on. He helped himself to a large helping for second breakfast after waking up from his morning nap.



We ate a delicious breakfast of fresh eggs, chicken sausage and feta. Marie missed it though. She enjoyed camping so much she slept through all of our morning stirrings. We were even able to remove the rain fly before she came out for a bite to eat. We finished packing up the tent and gave Basker a chance to get into the lake. We were headed for Bangor for some sushi and shopping. Marie was excited to go shopping. She said that she is always awake for shopping. We stopped for lunch first and then headed to the mall. It had been a long day but we all wanted to get home. I especially wanted to get some rest in preparation for the Winslow Summer Heat 5 K run....my first of the kind.


The race was this morning. Ciara had asked if I was nervous. I wasn't last night, though was a bit prior. I have been working on getting into better shape and had done a 3 mile run earlier this week. My legs felt good and I had found a pace that worked - about 10 minutes per mile. I left early to register and stretch. Many friends from school were there including Jared, Mandy and Lori. Mandy is a strong runner and quickly jumped in front of the rest of us and finished well before. Lori was next. She's also been working hard for this event. I was after her, though not visibly.

Jared......finished. He picked it up a notch when someone hinted that Oak Pond Brewery was shutting down, but if he hurried, could still get a growler. We all won Watermelons. I also won a ticket for two to the Waterville Opera house. Ciara and I are psyched. I very proud of myself for this feat. I was able to both mentally and physically participate. My time was just under 34 minutes. I told Ciara this was a success as it was a little bit faster than my practice run at the park yet the course was more challenging and longer. I'm now in the place where I have to keep doing such runs. I don't want to lose either discipline. I'm fearful that if I don't have events such as this on the horizon, I will get lax.

The day was a success however and in our own way we celebrated. I swam a bit at my mother's pool. Marie likes French Bread pizza so we got some groceries and made a delicious dinner.

Ironically, Marie hasn't done a lot of cooking but did a great job making the sauce and putting together this masterpiece. It gave me time for a photo op with Rylan:
Tomorrow we will clean, do yard work and get ready for a trip to MDI on Monday.