Dear Reader:

We are back and… even more unexpectedly….Philly’s sun was out bright and shining yesterday…no delays…*In fact if we had taken the Charlotte flight back, like we did going, our flight would have been cancelled due to bad weather. Life keeps us on our toes!

Anne and I walked past the cancelled Charlotte flight (at 6:00 in the morning) with all the poor passengers shaking their heads to find other ways to fly home as we flew in to sunny Philly and tried out a real Philly Cheese Steak sandwich….DELICIOUS!

Actually the whole trip was like that…everything just fell into place at the perfect moment to allow us to pack (as much as humanly possible) into four days of loving and learning about Maine and its wonderful inhabitants!

I mentioned yesterday in the blog post that I was leaving the spruce and fir behind in Maine to return to South Carolina’s pine and that was “fine” :)!

I was wrong….the original state flag of Maine (title picture) is making a comeback in popularity. It shows a white pine tree (not a spruce or fir that one sees so much of in Maine) and a star representing the north star for its two emblems. In fact the state flower is the white pine cone. Who knew?

South Carolina claims the palmetto tree for its state tree but in most of the state it is the pine trees that dominate the different regions… more so than just the lowcountry palmetto. (The pine trees sure dominate my back yard and gardens…especially pine cones….not white…just hard…especially when they hit my head!) 🙂

The state animal in Maine…is of course…the moose…an elusive creature that I came to consider more fantasy than real in my quest to find one. (though I will take you on my quirky, hilarious search to find one this upcoming week.)

Sherry told us  that the farther north one goes in Maine, the higher the chances increase of a moose sighting….we did get as far as Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor…but I think the moose was scared off from all the buses of “foliage followers” ….tourism is quite popular this time of year.

We actually hit the peak season (by sheer luck) this past week and it took my breath away….just a couple of samples to tease you until I overcome my jet lag and put all the photos in some kind of order together for you.

Well…I don’t know if “we changed the world” on this trip :)….but I do know that Maine changed me in the novelty of seeing another beautiful lifestyle/culture with down-to -earth people who love life ….especially the friendliest most generous people who I got to meet ….Kathy and Steve, Anne’s sister and brother-in-law, Sherry…close friend from former teaching days (Sherry is in the Time picture with Anne above) and Becky and Dan…old high school friends.

We were wined and dined better than any five-star restaurant and given ideas on the best way to use the back roads of Maine to find the top front scenes-of small hamlets and quaint seaside villages…on our limited time there. (Like Camden, Maine from the mariner)

(In towns like this I half-expected to see Angela Lansbury (in Murder She Wrote) ride her bike down the sidewalk!)  With a little sleuthing we discovered at the Portland Light House…that another popular sleuthing television series is using a small town outside Portland as the fictional setting for its on-going mystery too….stay tuned to find out what?) We traveled to three different lighthouses and all were spectacular!!!

So until tomorrow….I “oohed and aahed” so much on this trip at the sheer beauty of Maine…that I made myself almost hoarse! God sure spread the beauty of our country around ….putting something unique in all our states.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh