Climbing on Granite

The past few days have been fun- and bird-filled. I'm exhausted. I've been back to "Good Birding Trail" and have since added BAWW, AMRE, and SCJU to my life list. I also got great BAEA photos that morning.

(I'll do a plug for my photo site here: http://picasaweb.google.com/susan.culliney).

Yesterday, Rachel-my-roommate and I went over to Mount Desert Island for a tutoring in tidepool interpretation. The tidepool language is pretty rough, but it was fun to poke around looking for crabs, sea stars, anemones, and periwinkles. It's amazing to remember how diverse the tidepools on the west coast were. Message to people still at Palo (and those others of you who have access): GO TIDEPOOLING, IT'S AWESOME. Then we took the long way home and got some disappointing looks at what were probably Common Loons, but who were so far away, I'm waiting to get a more satisfying look of them before checking them off.

Today, we went into Winter Harbor to attend the annual Lobster Fair. We didn't get the lobstah dinnah as it was $18 and we'd just had lunch. But we did peruse the craft booths and stopped to listen to a couple of songs by "Schoodic Steel", the local steel drum band who were rockin' despite the chilly waters this far north of the caribbean. I couldn't help but think of Michael, just back from Sandals, Jamaica, playing his "Hot! Hot! Hot!" steel drum in the parking lot at Dunder Miflin.

I meant to start out by saying that the bouldering and climbing here is awesome as the granite is everywhere, and abuts the ocean, so you're climbing by the sea (though of course, the side of the shed will do in a pinch). It's best at low tide when more of the coast is exposed. I've got some sweet bruises and scrapes from jumping around on the rocks.