A couple of weeks ago Jeff & I headed to Andrew Jackson State Park – just across the line in Lancaster County, so about 45 minutes or so from here – to see the Lancaster Community Theatre production of Night of the Living Dead at the amphitheater there. It was a perfect night to be watching a creepy play outside. A little bit of wind blowing the dry leaves around, just cool enough for a jacket – they couldn’t have written it into the script any better. No pix during the play itself, but I did get this one of the stage before the play began…

…and the cast taking their bows after the play was over.

A couple of weeks ago Mason agreed to go with me to the Schiele Museum in Gastonia, to check out the new dinosaur model they have there, the quetzalcoatlus. It took the place of the life size T-rex model that had been in the lobby for years and year. That model will be refurbished and put on display again in a couple of years, showing the new information they have discovered about how they think the T-Rex might actually have lived – more like a bird. How crazy is that. This new model is huge – much bigger than the T-rex, but not as substantial – with bird bones. It was very cool.

They also have a sort of new exhibit at the museum on, of all things, barbecue. I am going back by myself sometime soon so I can spend as much time as I want learning about BBQ in the Carolinas. None of the kids I’ve been with are nearly as excited about it as I am 🙂

Our semi-annual church yard sale was the first week of the month, and on Friday I took Clara with me when I picked her up from school for us to get a hotdog for lunch (it was a half-day since fall break was the next week.) Her Great Aunt Christy was there – I’d seen her before I left to go pick up Clara, & she said she would wait to see her before she left – and I got this cute picture of them together. She always called Clara her Little Cotton Ball 🙂

I have been having some trouble with my camera off & one for the past month, but finally worked this morning & got pictures downloaded from about the past month. Here are a couple of action pictures of Adam – #50 – and his 9th grade Bearcat teammates in action against the Andrew Jackson JV team. You can tell in this first one that Adam looked like David against Goliath with that guy he was going up against, but as the game went on Adam figured out how to get around him, & Bearcats came out with a big win.

Our star after the game…

We spent our last full day of the tour in Newport, Rhode Island. It was another day where it rained off & on, but we took a bus tour around the coast. The views of the ocean were beautiful, and saw LOTS of sailboats. The first picture is looking through all of the masts of boats that were tied up at the harbor. The other two are just the ocean and those beautiful black rocks that we all up and down the coast on this trip.

On our way out of Maine we drove through the beautiful towns of Kennebunk and Kennebunkport. None of the Bushes were there, but I did get this picture of their compound – from a distance 🙂

It was raining by the time we got to Boston, so the pictures of our bus tour didn’t turn out great. It had slowed to a drizzle by the time we got to Fenway Park, so we had just a couple of minutes to get out and make pictures, and I got this one of the statue of Carl Yastrzemski.

I had no idea that cruise ships departed from Portland, ME. I’d love to know more about it – where they go, etc. It looked like a big ship, though, so it must be a pretty popular place.

Supper that night was a traditional Maine lobster dinner, with dessert made with Maine blueberries. It was yummy. Meg & I had gotten us a piece of Maine blueberry pie to go at lunch earlier in the day that we had for a snack the next day. The blueberries there are different than here – so tiny but so yummy. Wonderful day.

We were in Maine for the fifth day of our New England tour, starting in Freeport, where we visited the LL Bean Flagship store. I took this picture of the moose head on display when I first walked in the door, before I realized that there were animal heads on every wall 🙂

That afternoon we were in Portland, where we took a Harbor Lights cruise, & saw some of the beautiful seascapes in the area. I never did manage to get a picture of the waves crashing on those black rocks – I was too mesmerized to ever get my camera out in time. It was beautiful, though.

The smallest lighthouse in Maine – and there are many. I loved that this was included on our tour 🙂

The afternoon we were in New Hampshire we spent riding the cog train to the top of Mount Washington, the tallest mountain in the northeast, and spending some time exploring at the summit. There trees covered in berries on the ride up. They were so pretty, and I cannot for the life of me remember what they were called.

We got this picture of Meg & me when we made it to the stop 🙂

The train that took us there. What a great day.