Maine, a family wedding before venturing off to Europe

 There was a family wedding in Maine on September 3. We try not to miss such things. We intended to go to Venice late in the year and decides to visit the Maine Coast in August, go to the wedding and then off  to Europe. We left Mexico on August 15 for nearly three weeks in Maine, a couple days in Boston, and then off to Europe.

While on the coast, we stayed in Portland, Boothbay Harbor, Rockland and Bar Harbor. Then home to Garland (OK, it is Pat's home, Bill grew up 8 miles away in Dexter.)

As you may have noticed, we visit Maine quite often. We visit many of the same places each trip and Pat always eats as much lobster as possible. So we don't want to bore you with the day by day details. Instead we refer you to our postings from July 2018 (see Sidebar).

As a postscript to that posting, we had a lovely trip with great weather. But when we returned home we discovered San Miguel had be inundated with rain with flooding that took out the primary access to the airport.

We did something different this time. For our 55th anniversary we went to a highly praised restaurant in Rockland, Primo. We have wanted to visit in the past but we were typically there in midday, and Primo is only open at night. Advance reservations are needed. We made ours in April, just to be sure. The highlight of. the meals was the seared Foie Gras with olive oil cake. Pat was delighted that they had mackerel as a special.

This was a very successful visit to New England because we reconnected with:

Bill's cousins Maxine and Mary

Elaine, Pat's childhood best friend

Our high school friend Carol

Two friends from University, Brian and Denham

Ken, who we met on our mutual first day of post University work

Marci, a business school friend of Pat's

Evelina, who we first met in San Miguel

To extend the connections further, Maxine (Bill's cousin) asked us to lookup Bill's Great grandfather's (William H. Harding) tombstone while we were in Bar Harbor. We succeeded only to find the stone covered with lichen. We learned it is quite easy to remove lichen so  we can share with you a cleaned up, readable tombstone. 

And of course, the wedding was beautiful — on a picture perfect day with Penobscot Bay in the background.

The proud grandparents (Jim & Sandra) with Uncle Bill.

The gorgeous bride is Pat's grand/great niece (we can't find a definitive source of which word is correct, but she is Pat's niece's daughter). 

On Labor Day we were off to Boston. Along the way we stopped to visit Denham, and spent the night with Marci. Tuesday we were out on Boston Harbor on Ken's boat and Wednesday, after lunch with Evelina, we were off to Lisbon.