More paddling.

First of all, Happy Earth Day! I think our planet certainly deserves more recognition than a single day. Hopefully people appreciate what a great place it can be.
Anyway, don't really feel up to writing a bunch this time, so here some photos. In short, drove to Boothbay on Friday, paddled out to Spectacle again, camped. Woke up, paddled back to the harbor, went for a short paddle with my friend Melissa and her friend (I worked with Melissa last summer). Had lunch. Drove over to Knickerkane Park, paddled around a bunch, back to Spectacle Island. Paddled back in the morning. Dropped off the boat, and headed home. Good times. On to the pictures...

View of Squirrel Island from Burnt Island.

Mouse Island from the beach on Burnt Island.

North Spectacle and Indiantown Island.

Isle of Springs and North Spectacle Island.

South Spectacle Island and the Sheepscot River.

I love this island.

Quite a scramble to get up there in 10 seconds... Looking SE towards Southport.

The air might have been warm (70's), but the water was still frigid.

Glacial Striations.

Home sweet home.

Isle of Springs at dusk.

See if you can guess what this is...

Looking towards Townsend Gut with a nearly full moon.

Nerd picture. Rock hammer for scale.

Indiantown Island and Townsend Gut another night with the moon even brighter.

Sure beats waking up to an alarm clock.

The backriver near "the terrible tube".

Took a couple videos too, but haven't had the patience to upload them yet. Maybe later.

Hooray for being able to ride again!

Yes that's right, I'm finally able to ride again. No mountain biking for some time yet, but the back roads are finally free of ice. In fact, I rode 4 times this past week. I think that's more than I've ridden in the past 5 months combined! I've been scouting some nice gravel road routes as well. And you know how much I love gravel road riding. Don't know why that is. Anywho, you probably remember me previously bitching about all the hills around here. After just a week of riding, I'm starting to get used to them. I'm no climber, that's for sure, but it's not killing me anymore. An interesting thing about all the gravel roads I find is that a lot seem to have "hill" in the name. Towne Hill Rd, Cherry Tree Hill Rd, Molly Supple Hill Rd, East Hill Rd, Culver Hill Rd, and my favorite (discovered today) Lightning Ridge Rd. There's one road called Vincent Flats Rd. Bit deceiving really. Sure, there's no ups and downs to it, but it's a nice gradual climb. There's not many flat sections at all, even on the roads that don't have "hill" in their name. But that's ok. It's good for me. It's just taking some adjusting. I've been riding the good ol' 'cross bike and it's pretty much ideal for this type of riding it seems. A lot of the roads on northern hillsides (out of the sun) are still surrounded by snow and the roads are still thawing. They're incredibly spongy and it totally sucks your speed away. No worries though, they'll dry out and harden up eventually. I went out and rode for 2 hours today. Not a very long ride by most people's standards, but the longest I've done since I left Mississippi. Pretty beat and muddy by the time I got home, but I'm not complaining. Hooray for bikes!

Looking east from Cherry Tree Hill Rd. This field was covered in snow a week ago. Yay!

Ah, gravel. This is still pretty close to town, but I got way out in the boonies this time. And you know what? Instead of people out in the sticks giving me dirty looks, they smiled and waved. Vermont's pretty cool.

Spring?

First forecast I've seen in a loooooooooong time that didn't have snow in it! Now it just needs to stay above freezing at night to melt even more snow. By the way, snowed a couple inches yesterday...