Nature on the way home...

Kenduskeag Canoe Race 2010

I took Cooper to the Kenduskeag Canoe Race again this year as something fun and free to do. While it a really raw and chilly day, he seemed to enjoy it a little. I think he would have had a lot more fun if it was a little warmer. It wasn't as exciting as it usually is either as the water was really very low do to the lack of a snowy winter. We did have a lot a rain throughtout but if you read some of the other blogs of people who watch the water levels and actually run the race, it appears that the water dropped about a foot in just the last week. Anway, its always fun to see the different themed boats and outfits people wear. Here's some of the fun we saw this year...
As usual, with over 400 boats, both sides of the river were loaded with boats waiting to go in and leave with their heat of 5. It seemed they had most of the kayaks heading out first this year leaving ahead of the canoes.
A couple of the racers on the bridge with their artistic use of duct tape... This guy didn't really have a heck of a lot going on other than a colored wig but he did have a video camera strapped to his head. There were actually a couple of people with cameras. Would love to see some of the footage from those. Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox...Believe this was Timber Tina from Survivor Redneck Flat-top / Mullet mask. Obama and his Secret Service even made an appearance...Captain Morgan made his second appearance as well. And here is some of the action from 6 Mile Falls...




And at the very end of the race in downtown Bangor, the tide was really high and one of the guys who paddled a white water boat down the river was playing around and bow tapping the bridges as he went under them. Pretty cool way to finish if you as ask me...

Out for a bit...

We didn't really having anything to do yesterday morning so we decided we'd go out and just get rid of some popcorn that no one was eating by giving it to the birds. Cooper likes to chase the pigeons usually so we figured it wouldn't hurt if we baited them a bit. Unfortunately, there weren't may pigeons around as it was a bit chilly and we ended up with sky rats...

First Real Haircut

Cosmo finally got his first real haircut this month. We took him to see Tiffany at Regis because she's cut Cooper's hair the whole time and does a great job. Cosmo's hair is a bit different than Cooper's so he'll be keeping it a bit longer for now. We had been trimming his bangs and the sides over his ears a bit here and there and just had Tiffany do the same but trim things up so they actually look like a real haircut. He sat pretty still most of the time...





Realizing here that it's almost impossible to get a profile picture of Cosmo unless someone else is directly infront of him distracting him so no side or back pictures but it does look good still being longer in the back with his little curls.

Finished these quick guys up from the Discovery Channel's Orange County Choppers show. The show was a great guys Soap Opera type show but ended due to everyone having enough of each other. The cube type people are quick and easy and are recognizeable but aren't as much fun. Doubtful that I'll be doing many more of these.

Destination Unknown

I had a quick meeting downtown yesterday and decided that afterwards, I would attempt to grab one of the caches hidden right outside the building I was meeting in. I had been after it before, but didn't search too hard because it's right in an area where there are a ton of people walking, as well as the coords being kind of off a bit. My meeting was over around 9:30ish and I had seen that the cache owner had updated his coords due to some DNF's so I figured I'd make another attempt. This time it was a piece of cake with the updated coords. After this, really my only plan for the day was to head out to Hampden near my brothers house to try and grab some better photos of the bald eagle that's been hanging out in the area. I wasn't able to see him today but here are some of the photos I had gotten last Sunday of him. You really have to click on the photos themselves to kind appreciate any sort of detail. There is only so much you can do with the basic telephoto lens that I have. I especially like the last one as he's showing off a little with one wing.



After not getting to see him again today, I decided to head back towards Bangor and ended up heading into Kenduskeag to look at the river and see how high the water was at 6 Mile falls. The water looked a bit low and unless we get a crap load of rain in the next two weeks, there is only going to be the one main shoot to take for the canoeists in the Kenduskeag race on the 17th. Heading up to look at the race starting area, I passed another two caches, both by Hondohawk, and grabbed up the two of them. It's been a long time since I grabbed of his caches that wasn't a micro. After getting these two, I decided to continue north a little ways and get the newer Robyville Bridge cache. I say newer because I had been there once before getting the second stage to Alex's Monster Multi Nightmare cache. Having done 4 caches that quickly, I decided I again would continue a little further north after some caches that were placed earlier on in the week, but were out of range to get on a lunch break. I headed into East Corinth and grabbed another four caches, grabbing a couple tracking bugs on the way. A couple of these were somewhat unique to the area yet I had seen the type of hide before. I think one of the downfalls to having been caching for a while now and having 625 finds, its rare that you come across something that I haven't seen by a previous hider. I guess thats primarily because every cache I've found, has been in Maine.
With a few caches done, and it wasn't quite noon yet, I continued to just pop the next closest cache on the GPS up and head to it. Before I knew it, I was kind of out a ways and didn't really realize where I was until I came into a town with a Rite Aid. Turns out, I cached my way right up to Dexter and there was a nice tight little grouping of another 7 caches. I zig zagged my way through town and grabbed all the ones that weren't temporarily disabled and by the time I was done, it was 3:30. Time to head back. One of the ones I grabbed while there, "Work of Art", had a work related structure. Nothing really special but there aren't many of these around that you can walk directly under as most are heavily fenced in so I figured I'd grab a couple pictures from this angle.


I finished up with 16 caches for the day and scored 3 trackables that I can take on my lunch break tomorrow to Brad's Aloha Event to drop off if anyone is still around by that time. At this point, I am up to 626 caches and only 7 away from being ranked in the top 100 cachers in Maine. Quite possibly, Sunday might allow for me to break into that tier if I get all my stuff done early enough in the morning.

Irregular Patterns

While walking downtown Bangor with Cooper and Cosmo, I was looking at one of the buildings and realized it stuck up quite a bit more than the others. I hadn't really noticed before because I've almost always been looking for a cache instead. I found it pretty cool that there were this may different brick patterns all making up the same building. Must have taken some pretty elaborate planning when building. Kinda creepy when you look at the third picture as it has an arm behind the plants. Someone was watching me...