Kennebunkport

On Monday, August 8, we left Bar Harbor and drove the 200 miles down to Kennebunkport, settling into a great, little, very wooded campground, less than a mile from Dad and Peg's place. We visited with them for a bit, sitting with them and Tommy while they had dinner that night.
On Tuesday we drove a few miles to Goose Rocks beach and spent a few hours on the really clean, beautiful, white sand beach. Bob managed to go for a swim, even though the water temperature was around 65 degrees, while Donna did manage to get her feet wet. It seemed like everyone around us was either French-Canadian or a Red Sox fan. Or both. After leaving the beach we visited with Dad and Peg again, even got them to enjoy the fresh air outside for awhile.
Wednesday was a nasty, rainy day, so we drove up to Freeport and the L.L. Bean store. We thought they might have a good, small refrigerator that we could put in the bus, but they didn't. It's getting to be a pain buying ice all the time and digging stuff out of the cooler. By the way, we got word from the service guy at Camping World in Concord that the cooling unit for the fridge would not be in until next Tuesday, at the earliest. Ended off picking up a portable fridge at Wal-Mart. Visited with Dad and Peg for awhile again today. Dad had bunch of Aiden pics that Julie had sent him stuffed away in a photo album. We took a bunch of them and bought a collage frame at Wal-Mart and presented it to him the next day. He loved it!
Thursday was sunny and warm again, so this time we went to Kennebunk Beach for a few hours. It was a bit windy on the beach, and kept clouding over, but Bob went in for a swim again.
Bob reflects: I was watching a kid skim-boarding on the beach and started reminiscing. Summer of 1965. 14 years old. My best friend Ponce (David Parnigoni) and I went to a lumber yard in Westerly and had them cut out these round plywood boards, about 3 ft in diameter. We took them home, beveled one edge all around, and painted both sides, with Maltese crosses on top, and Voila! We had skimboards! Nothing like the high-tech, super-duper materials of today's boards, but they worked for us! We spent the whole summer skim-boarding up and down East Beach. Or at least when the tide was low. We even hitch-hiked back and forth from Watch Hill with our boards every day. That's how we got around back then.
Back to the present. We pulled up stakes at the campground on Friday morning, paid one last visit to Dad and Peg, and headed to Connecticut to spend a few days with Brother Jack and family. We were traveling down I-495 through Massachusetts, about 3 miles from our exit, when the traffic came to a complete standstill. Apparently, there was a horrible accident les than a mile ahead, and 495 became a parking lot. A truck was hauling a backhoe, and the backhoe tipped over onto a car, trapping 4 people inside. We were stopped for 1 hour and 45 minutes. We spent the time talking with some of our new "neighbors" around us.
Finally got going again, and got to Jack's place in Higganum, CT, around 5:30.