Boothbay Hah-Bah

One of the fun things about traveling with another family is that the kids express their best impulses with regard to each other. That's my roundabout way of saying: Iain got a present.

It was a compass, with magnifying lenses you could adjust in several ways. Iain loved, loved, loved this toy and not just because the two boys ran around "pewing" each other with their compasses. He also looked through it, as you can see.

I think Charles and I were both surprised by how much Iain liked the water. He was really, really interested in lobsters, lobster boats, the river, the tides, kayaking, and anything else boat or water related.

So Tomoe and I took the boys down the next peninsula (look at the coast of Maine: it's just one ragged peninsula after another) to take a harbor cruise.

We had a bit of time to kill before the boat left and Iain spent it eating a lobster-shaped chocolate lollipop (after declaring fudge "not good") (WHAT? Who is he? Not related to me, I can tell you that.) and poking around a boutique trying to talk me into buying him fanciful sculptures made of old hardware.

Finally, it was time to get onto the boat with 60 senior citizens. Ahem. We were...the youngest people on that boat by about 25 years. Anyway. The boat (what kind of boat? "It has a diesel engine," the young lady said when I bought the tickets. Oh, great. Very helpful.) had a nice upper deck so we spent the 2.5 hours sitting up there, in the breeze (read: stiff wind that tried to snatch my hat three times (!)) looking out onto the harbor, bay, and ocean.

This was the part where Iain started to think, "So....anything else to this? Or do we just drive around looking at stuff?"

Towards the end, Iain and our friends started to consult the coastal map they'd brought, charting our progress returning to Boothbay Harbor. It was kind of neat to see us pass Pemaquid Point, chug up around the end of the mainland and waggle back into Boothbay.

And although the main attraction was being out on the water, smelling the salt air and trying to keep your hat on, we did see a bald eagle, some seals, and lots of ocean birds.

Afterwards, of course, it was ice cream time. Or, in Iain's case, sherbet. Because every single day he has to have his ice cream. And since Maine boasts an ice cream shop about every 50 feet on the coast...why not?