Puzzles, Lobster, Water, Acadia

We have a couple of  "build it" traditions in the family.  At Christmas there are Legos.  During summer vacations there are puzzles.  The boys, now joined by their wives, started work on an Acadia National Park puzzle last evening.  It was finished by this morning.

At the top Jan is putting in the ceremonial last piece of the puzzle.  Above is the completed puzzle (on a glass table so you can see my reflection taking the picture).

Acadia is a different National Park because it is so close to major population centers.  It is the most visited National Park in the country although the most visited National Park Service site is the Statue of Liberty.  Acadia was the result of land purchases by the Rockefeller family (once again if you remember the story of the Grand Tetons).  There were and still are private homes that exist, surrounded by park lands.  It is very close to Bar Harbor, where lobsters are a fairly big business.  Below, one of the "bug catchers" as they sometimes call themselves, is checking the traps.  There are tens of thousands of traps just around the area where we are staying.

 The only fjords on the east coast are in Acadia National Park.  Sommes Sound!  Sometimes the sail boats have trouble making it through the channel because the hills on either side of the sound dampen the wind.

There is nothing special about the picture above.  I took a picture of a photographer using a 10 thousand dollar lens with my 800 dollar lens. Lens envy.

We finished up the afternoon touring at Northeast Harbor.  Jesse and Emily are sitting on a dock in front of millions of dollars worth of boats.  It was fun to watch them roll in and out.  Some of the lobster catchers have side jobs delivering packages to the islands around here for UPS and FedEx.  We watched the trucks drive down to the docks, spot their person, and unload dozens of packages.  It was amazing how many of the UPS packages were from Amazon.