Our trip to Acadia National Park, Maine

September is traditionally a slow time here at the Joseph Smith Memorial so Elder McKinnon arranged for us to have two preparation days together so we could make a trip to Maine to see Acadia National Park. The distance from our home in Vermont to the park in Maine is about 350 miles which is about the same distance that we travel from our home in Erda to Rebecca's home in Star Valley, Wyoming. We generally get to Rebecca's home in about four or four and a half hours. It took us eight hours to get to Acadia!! Traveling in New England is nothing like traveling in the west. Vermont has two freeways, New Hampshire and Maine each have one, they all go north and south no large roads go east and west. Sister Sanford who is from Maine told me that the people who built the roads just let a cow go and then they built the roads behind her. We had a great time on the trip over. The scenery is gorgeous and will continue to get better and better as the foliage changes more.

When we finally arrived at Mount Desert Island we stayed in a darling Bed & Breakfast in Salsbury Cove called the Coach Stop Inn. Since we had been riding for a long time the first thing we did after getting settled into our room was to hike to the shoreline about a mile and a half away. The tide was out and the shore was covered with mussels, clam shells, barnacles, and snails it was a small but pretty cove.

We ate that evening at the Chart House restaurant which sits by the water, we had a table facing the bay. I had a lobster and Elder Vorwaller had a pasta dish with a variety of seafood on it, lobster, crab, scallops, etc.. We watched the sun set and the moon rise over the bay.

Next morning we enjoyed a three course breakfast in the dining room of our B&B. The first course was Maine blueberry fritters served with Maine maple syrup this was followed by a Pineapple Orange smoothee served in champagne glasses. Our final course was eggs Napoleon which was a fresh baked croissant topped with an omelet style egg folded in quarters with fresh mozzarella and ham in the folds and topped with more fresh mozzarella and freshly made salsa. It was wonderful. After breakfast we checked out and spent the day touring and exploring one of the most breathtakingly beautiful National Parks we have ever visited, and we have visited quite a few. The waves pounding against solid granite boulders is an over-powering sight. The island is covered with conifers.The trees on Cadillac Mountain, the highest point on the eastern sea coast, are stunted and we guessed that the reason for that is two fold, first the storms that blow across this point must be severe and secondly Cadillac Mountain is a huge pile of pink granite sprinkled with a very thin layer of soil which has blown off on the highest peaks. The drive around the shoreline was so amazing and the whole experience was very enlivening. We were so glad we got to visit a lighthouse during our brief stay.

We had a wonderful, wonderful experience.

Sis. Vorwaller enjoyed our visit to the Billings Farm and Museum as much as I. The farm house and farm are well kept and as you can see in the photo it is still a working farm of 1,000 of the original 3,000 acres. They had resources to built the house way ahead of its time. We thought about how neat it would be to live in it now. The museum was full of so many antique pieces of equipment that were in such good condition like the horse drawn corn planter in the one photo. They also had an amazing display of beautiful quilts which pleased Sis. Vorwaller.

Sis. Shirley Pease who is a member of the South Royalton ward where we attend took Sis. Vorwaller and I on a field trip to learn the location of a few of the sites around the scenic village of Tunbridge where most of the history of the Smith family happened. I happened to catch a small flock of turkeys in the foreground of this shot of Tunbridge that evening. The picture below is of the Tunbridge Gore where Asael and Mary Duty had moved their family to help their sons start farms of their own. It appeared to be a fairly fertile valley situated in the rolling hills about three miles from Tunbridge.

At the suggestion of Elder McKinnon we joined with Elder and Sister Slade for a trip to the Montreal, Quebec, Canada Temple on Tuesday, August 26. We picked the Slade's up a little after 5:00 a.m. and the trip took about three hours. We had made an appointment to be on the 9:00 a.m. session. The people at the temple were so kind to us. There were only the four of us on the session who were English speaking only, but they did the entire session in English and asked the other participants in the group if they needed a headset for the French translation. I thought that was really going the extra-mile to make us feel welcome and comfortable. There were about 20 people on the session including the four of us. After the session we traveled into the heart of Montreal to the area known as "Old Montreal" to have some lunch before driving back to Vermont. It really is a foreign country even though it is so close. We got lost trying to find this part of town but most of the people we asked for directions spoke some English.

Montreal is a beautiful city on the banks of the St. Lawrence River. We were glad to have the chance to view the city and very grateful to go to the temple since we haden't been since we left the M.T.C. Our next temple trip will be to Boston in a few months which we are really looking forward to.

On bright crisp mornings when Sis. Vorwaller and I hike to the top of Patriarch Hill we are rewarded with the sweet taste of Blackberries which are now ripening faster than we can pick. I guess most people don't like getting scratched by their thorny stems but the harvest is worth it for us. Fresh Blackberries on oatmeal cereal is great with Vermont maple syrup. And I'm really excited about having Blackberry pie.

I have met the most interesting people here at the memorial. A few weeks ago I met a single woman and her young daughter at the monument. They didn't want a tour of the visitor's center but I told them about the monument and they told me that they were here to find a letterbox. This really piqued my couriosity so I asked her to tell me all about letterboxes and this is what I found out: Letterboxing is an intriguing pastime combining artistic ability with "treasure-hunts in parks, forests, and cities around the world. Participants seek out hidden letterboxes by cracking codes and following clues. The prize: a miniature piece of art known as a rubber stamp--usually a unique, hand-carved creation.
Letterboxers stamp their discoveries in a personal journal, then use their own rubber stamp, called a signature stamp, by stamping it into the logbook found with the letterbox, perhaps writing a note about the weather or their adventures in finding the letterbox.
Clues and directions on where to find letterboxes can be found on the internet at www.atlasquest.com .
This is a picture of me finding my first letterbox and a picture using the stamp that Elder Vorwaller carved for me from a pink eraser to stamp in the logbook. The letterbox I found is on the memorial site, down by the Solomon Mack foundations.

August 8, we met some members of our South Royalton Ward, Randy and Amy Ferris and their daughters and Brother and Sister Oparowski in Pomfret, Vermont, at the Moorse Farm blueberry fields. It was a rainy day but we were able to arrive between showers. In less than an hour Craig and I had picked 13 pounds of delicious blueberries. This is the first time we have ever tasted fresh wild blueberries and it was such a treat not only to eat them, but to see how they grow and to pick them ourselves.