Fall in the east

Hey all,

I've been "home" for a little over a week and a half now, although I haven't actually been at my house much. Since it's been so long since I've gotten to enjoy a fall in Maine (which any Mainer will tell you is the best season here), I've been out and about enjoying it as much as possible before I sit down to figure out what I'm doing next. I went up to Acadia, my 5th national park in the past month, to meet up with my roomie from Alaska for the last few days. She drove up from New Hampshire. It felt great to be camping, hiking and enjoying the simple life outdoors again... but the "mountains" around here look so small to me now!

The road trip was a great adventure involving many things I'd never seen before as well as some old familiars. I drove back down with 2 friends I met at work this summer, both from Michigan. We followed a pretty similar route to my last trip across the country but chose to take more back highways instead of the interstate. Although it may take longer, it's so much more rewarding and interesting and led us to some pretty neat and unexpected places. We met some memorable characters on our way through Canada on the Cassiar Highway, an old logging road-turned-highway that lacked any road lines and, for an occasional 20-mile stretch, pavement altogether. One of my favorite memories is driving up a narrow bulldozer track to a lookout behind an RV park in BC, as recommended by the owner, and having a lazy picnic above the valley with guitars and a bottle of red.

Back in the states, we first stopped in at Willamette and visited for a few days before heading to Yellowstone, probably the part of the trip we were all most excited about. Even after being in a national park around wildlife all summer, the three of us were blown away by what we got to see there. Buffalo, elk, moose, fox, deer, eagles left and right... it put Denali to shame! It's a very diverse park, and we didn't even get down to Grand Teton. As we crossed the midwest, we got to visit a lot of friends from work this summer, which was also really fun. Everyone's feeling rather lost now that our jobs are over and we're back in the real world, so our friends were pretty excited to hear about our adventures. I posted some photos on facebook, so feel free to check 'em out.

I'm about to go sailing with my family for the long weekend, but after that I'll probably start looking at new schools and coming up with some sort of (escape) plan for the winter until I can go back up to Alaska again. I'm thinking of applying to the New England Culinary Institute in Montpelier, and possibly WWOOFing somewhere farther south and warmer. Any suggestions? Bye for now!