Had a very nice day today. Got up to clear blue skies and cool temps and decided it was a good day for a road trip. Started out south and a little east towards the coast with my first destination being the Fort Point light house outside of Stockton Springs Maine. A wonderful little light house on a cliff overlooking a narrow point in Penobscot Bay. It had a uniquely automated bell tower, used when it was foggy, that I had not seen before. Though I think it was actually quite common here on the east coast. Took a bunch of pictures and wandered around the grounds for an hour or so. It was really beautiful out today.

   Once I was done there it was back in the truck and on my way south again. Didn't get very far though when I saw a sign for the 'Blue Jacket Model Boat' factory. I had planned to look this place up anyway because I needed to buy some small fittings, bitt's and cleat's and such, for my model railroad layout, so this was a great opportunity. Or so I thought. Turned out to be one of those 'Really Bad Stores', the kind you go into and come out of $175 poorer an hour later. They make high end ship model kits at this place, and just to wander around looking at all the built up models is fun in and of itself. But of course they had to have a few things in there designed specifically for HO model train enthusiasts. Now understand that HO models are built to a scale of 1:87.1 or some such none sense.  Meaning that each real foot, 12", on a model railroad is equivalent to slightly more than 87 feet in real life. This is not a very common scale. 1":1' is common, or 1":48' or 1/4":1' are common. The point being is that there isn't a lot of marine stuff made for HO scale models.... which is why I ended up with two small boat models, a light house model and a bunch of fittings for my dock scene. Oh well... at least I'll have something to do next time it rains all day.

   Was headed down the coast to Rockland and the Maine Light House Museum when I went through the town of Searsport. Once home to more sea captains, 500+, than any other port in the country, they had a maritime museum there that I simply had to stop and explore. Spread out amongst 8-9 buildings the museum had 3 buildings set aside just for small boats from that area, including several Rushton and Old Town canoes and pulling boats. A couple sailboats, numerous small pulling boats and ships gigs and of course a lobster boat rounded out the fleet.    In another building were displays of scrimshaw, ships models and paintings of old sailing vessels and battles.  Some of the paintings were so real looking that you woulds swear you could smell the sea.

    Lot's of other things to look at of course so it was nearly 4:00 p.m. before I got out of there. To late in the day to go on to Rockland, but not to late to finally go and get some lunch. Lucky for me there are always little places to eat around the waterfront, so lunch was an order of scallops and chips, from one of those little boardwalk vendors, eaten on a table overlooking the harbor.  Boy do I love seafood!

    Here are more pictures from the Grand Canyon trip. We are now up to day #9.

    

Our first hike of the day is up a narrow canyon that had a flash flood come down it sometime in July. Ben was saying that a rainstorm dropped 20"-24" in this drainage over the course of about 2 hours. A stream gauge that was in the canyon at the time recorded a stream flow of nearly 6,000 cfs after about 30-45 min's of rain. It then went up above 60,000 cfs.... before the gauge was swept away. To put this in context; The Colorado River, while we were on it, was running between 13,000 and 19,000 cfs. This little canyon was running 3-4 times as much water as the whole river usually had. It must of been wild in there.

This little stream is all that is left of what had been a raging torrent. Take a look at the size of some of the rocks that had been washed down by the flood.

I liked the washed gravel on the bottom of the pool as well as the soft burbling sound it made against the canyon walls.

Just had to go in a sit in it for a while.

This little guy shared my pool with me for a while before finally climbing out on to this rock to sun. He is about as big as my little finger nail.

It takes a long time for the morning sun to find its way into the bottom of some of the canyons.

This manzanita tree is nearly 20' above the floor of the canyon and as you can see, there isn't a whole lot left of it. Looks like it is going to survive anyway.

Looking up river from the Colorado, the flooded canyon is the one on the right. There were boulders in there the size of small cars that had been moved by the force of the water. It boggles my mind to think of a force that could move something weighing 20-30 tons.

Looking down river at some of the out flow.

Lunch time again and we are parked on another nice shady bench along the river.

Time to talk, read, sleep or just relax after lunch.

Marty and Ginny. Ginny is holding up this really neat solar battery charger for her kindle. Really need to check into that next time I'm at an REI store.

Alex.

Ben was reading some excerpts from various book written about the river.

Back on the boat and ready to get wet again.

Jim and I spent most of our time up on the front bow of the boat where the waves were the greatest. He had a couple of new waterproof camera's that he was using to take pictures and video with. I heard they all came out really well, but that he forgot to save them to a specific format before erasing them off of his camera's, so I don't think he managed to save anything. Bummer!

 

 

We are seeing more and more of those dark lave deposits along the sides of the canyon.

Jim had this ritual he would perform every night while setting up his cots. Once they were all upright he would go to the river for a bucket of water and then bring it back and wash all the sand off the top surface. Or as I liked to put it; Jim was happily wetting the bed.

A beautiful view from our campsite of the day.

I liked the cloud formations in this picture, as well as the slight red tint over the peak.