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Published: September 10th 2012
Rose Hips
Rose hips everywhere on our walk along the coast.After New York, we travelled North to visit a friend who used to live in Lismore - Jill. The bus from New York took us to Boston where we caught a tram to the North Station to cach a train up to Portland. Unfortunately when we got there we found the train was full, so we had to catch the tram back again to the bus station and get a bus to Portland instead. Always fun bouncing around public transport with huge backpacks on. Jill's mum Kate picked us up from the bus station and we spent the night in Scarborough at their beautiful house.
The next day Kate took us for a power walk along the coastline which was pretty beautiful. After that she dropped us in to the bus station and we travelled up to Rockland where Jill's partner Steve picked us up and took us to their cute cottage out of town. When Jill got home we chatted and ate and then went to bed (on possibly the world's squeakiest bed!).
In the morning we took it pretty slow, just hanging out and chatting before dropping Steve off at the bus terminal. He was on his
Misty
And the mist rolled in. Very thick way to Portland to spend some time learning how to make the old style wooden surfboards. As a keen surfer, he was pretty excited about this. Afterwards we drove to one of the many nearby small towns and wandered in and out of art galleries that were open as part of an art walk in the town. Some of it was good - some not so, but it was fun and we got some free food and drinks (yay for art gallery openings!). We also spent some time shopping in one of the many co-op shops in the region which have a pretty good range of health foods, and organics.
Saturday we went into Rockland with Jill and just strolled around looking into various shops. We went into a great cafe for lunch which also had a book shop out the back which had some great books. It was hard knowing that any books we bought would have to be carted around the US with us for the next couple of months. There were some excellent craft shops aswell, but they were very expensive, so browsing and window shopping was the way of the day. That evening for dinner,
Cute Cottage
Jill and Steve's house Deb, Tom and Lindsay came over and we had a delicious meal followed by an amazing dark chocolate basil cake. So tasty.
Sunday morning, we went for the traditional pancake breakfast and then drove to the botanic gardens where we spent the rest of the day (eating a picnic lunch we brought from home). They were really nice gardens with a great range of plants and sculptures, and a terrific kids gardening area. That evening when we got home, Chris had a look online and noticed that quite a few Burning Man tickets were starting to appear for sale. Maybe we would make it after all!
Monday we got up early and spent the day working in the herb farm where Jill works. The farm is called Avena Botanicals and is biodynamic. More info on their website here:
http://www.avenabotanicals.com and on their youtube page here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Avenabotanicalsvideo Jill had warned us of problems with the local parasitic ticks which are infested with Lyme disease. Both Jill and Steve had been infected previously and it's pretty nasty. We went for long sleeve tops and bottoms to reduce the risk. We started tough - weeding and harvesting Nettle. Always a
Fallout
Really? fun job! Thankfully it was very shaded as it was shaping up to be a really hot day. We soon moved on to more fun things - harvesting Tulsi (sacred Basil) to be dried and used for tea. This was out in the sun and we were getting quite baked. We stopped for lunch which was a delicious dahl with rice, and salad. It was very tasty and the choc-mint coconut ice cream which followed was perfect on a hot day. In the afternoon we went back out into the sun and harvested Calendula which was being used for tea and for succus. Chris briefly jumped on the Internet and organised to buy a couple of Burning Man tickets through paypal. Yay!
The next morning and Chris woke up feeling pretty bad - severe headache and tired. It looked like heat exhaustion so plenty of water and rest in a dark room was the prescription. Chris also found out that Paypal had refused his attempt to buy tickets, and had then locked his paypal account. The reason being that the order was done in the USA, whereas his account was Australian - this set off their possible fraud alarm.
A call to paypal resolved the issue and allowed him to attempt the money transfer again. Once the headaches had resolved (both the heat exhaustion and the paypal ones) when went and did some shopping for food items and Burning Man costumes.
Wednesday and Nena spent some time making a tutu for Burning Man. We also went to the herb farm and joined in with a herb walk and talk run by Deb which was very interesting. Great to see some herbs growing that we can't grow in Tasmania due to the different climates. We also had fun tasting a lot of the different herbal tinctures and glycetracts. We called up the guy we were buying Burning Man tickets from only to find out that Paypal wouldn't let him send the tickets to an address in USA as this address was different to Chris' address with paypal. Arrrgh! So, we created a new paypal account using Nena's details and an address in USA and then attempted to send the money through again. It was getting annoying as we were only in the area for a couple more days before heading to Las Vegas so we were running out of
time to get the tickets sent to us. For dinner a group of us went out to a Japanese restaurant in Rockland which was pretty tasty. Half way through the meal Jill got a phone call from a friend who lived down south past Portland and was about to have a baby. Jill had to leave straight away so we said our goodbyes then.
The next day we had planned for a group of us to go to a nearby island, but it was pouring rain and with Jill not around the trip was called off. Instead we did some stuff around the house and then got a lift in to the Bus terminal to catch the bus to Portland to meet Jill (the baby hadn't come yet). Along the way we also found that the attempt to transfer money from Nena's account hadn't worked either, so we decided to bite the bullet and pay via a Western Union Money transfer. This was a bit scary as it left us with no recourse if the seller didn't send us anything. It was also more expensive this way, but since the tickets had to be sent today - we had
OUCH!
Chris' toe has an introduction to the chair leg at speed. Result was one likely broken toe. to do it this way. We also got the seller to send the tickets to our hosts address in Las Vegas as it was too late to get them sent to Portland now. We grabbed some food and cooked up roast potatoes with salad for dinner (followed by a delicious but slightly weird creme caramel frozen yoghurt dessert).
Friday morning and the seller told us he had sent the tickets express yesterday evening to Las Vegas and they should arrive today. We texted our host and let him know they would be coming. Jill drove us in to Portland and we had a bit of a look around (including chasing her friend around town while driving to get him to stop). Then we caught the bus from Portland down to Boston airport to fly to Las Vegas!
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Brian Kliewer
non-member comment
A couple or four?
Haha. Great picture! I know exactly where this is, too. I used to show my paintings in the gallery you're standing in front of. Hope you enjoyed your time in Maine. Did you have any lobster?