Paintball Losers

Just kidding...we didn’t play paintball, but after you read about our experience at Warren Island you will understand the title of this post.  After spending a few days anchored in Rockland Harbor, we left in search of a setting more in tune with nature.  We discovered Warren Island State Park, which is only accessible by boat.  The island has a floating dock, and 10 mooring balls in the protected cove.  We picked up a mooring and decided to stay for a few days.  We spent the first day relaxing and working on boat projects.  On our second day we decided to launch the kayaks for a day of paddling and exploration.  Our first stop...Warren Island.  The moment we stepped onto the island we were greeted by a SWARM of mosquitoes. We quickly realized that we could generally outpace them if we kept moving.

The trail around the island offered beautiful views, but don’t stop too long the swarm is catching up!

Right Hand looks so peaceful, inviting, and mosquito free.

The island offers ‘state of the art’ facilities for the hard core camper...swat, swat...ugh...run!

The island was beautiful with fields of fern and trails that felt like the set of ‘Lord of the Rings’, but don’t stop to enjoy the view or the mosquitoes will eat you alive!

We completed the loop trail around the island (probably in record time) and felt as though we got a heart healthy work out from our jog around the island.  However, before returning to the kayaks we had to stop at the waters edge to wash away the huge red blood splats that covered our arms and legs.  We looked like the losers of a vicious paintball game! The strange part of this experience was that even though we each had dozens of bites neither of us had any after effects...no itching, no welts, and not one mosquito bothered to visit the boat.

Well that was a fun visit with nature, let’s move on to Belfast.

This is a quaint, charming, artsy harbor town, and this picture captures most of the town. If you zoom in and look closely you will see the water at the bottom of this street. There is also a wonderful walkway that wraps around the harbor and leads to a foot bridge over the water. 

Ingenious...catch your dinner and have a place to sit while eating!

Folk art fabulous!  We highly recommend a visit to this town.

We have decided to start heading south.  We still plan to explore on the way, but we are growing tired of being cold.  I know that most of the people reading this do not feel sorry for us, because you have been suffering with oppressive heat, but I need to be able to swim in the summer!

It was interesting to see aquaculture in action.

I was surprised to see so many Border Patrol boats. We have seen one in about 50% of our anchorages, and if there was a Canadian flagged vessel nearby they were boarded every time. We had a few ‘drive by’ visits, but no stops.

 

Passing Owl’s Head Light on our way to Tenants Harbor.

Before dropping anchor we approached a lobster boat and purchased 12 more.  We are getting better at processing day, but we are trying to perfect our approach to vacuum sealing the tails for the freeze. There was too much liquid for our Seal a Meal so we decided to let the tails drain for a few minutes👍🏻 

This life isn’t all fun and games, but what a beautiful place to be on laundry day!